

/ 


r 


• J i :l *J I 

t»». • . 


'TT ri * *• 


• • 

• . • • «■. .I./** . * - 


t * ! 

: • «* V • 


VWi • 'i • • *;• :•>; •. . 

■* ." ' : ' • '. , • * • • . **.; ’■? •*: .• 

■ • • ■ i , • . ’ . • 

/ ; ‘ * - • : 

«• »• •• \ \ 1 v. * ; v . • . • 1 1 *. • *. * • . * - ‘i • v< . \ * *, / * • . V » •, *. 

v *; • . ; ; *; v •' . ‘ * • . ' 


■ : V i • ! V •' • '■•^•Wv-fV-rVv ' • . ^ - 

v ■ • •• • '• •••*••/. j - • v * • t.y .* ' f 

* f • ■ .• . ■ i. ■ *» k * ’«■ * # « * ' * *■" I }• i 1 . 1 ' ; 1 ‘j •, j. '• :, i, i, ! *. • • * *' a ‘ • • •. r »* 

' • • * • • t* t •. i ' • 

i ,;vV' ./■ • rk<*>;V- 


i 


K 


1 f 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

1 -T) i; 6 DO 

I @§n{t J3.1/ ©apjrirj^i If _ 

Shelf.-dLj/.. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

















( 







































































































































































' 
































































































































t 






V 

♦ 











( 








































































* 

















THE 


MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 



BY REV. W. P. LOVEJOY, A.M., 

i i 

Of the North Georgia Conference . 


INTRODUCTION BY 

W. D. Anderson, D.D., 


Of the North Georgia Conference . 



PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 

BARBEE & SMITH, AGENTS, NASHVILLE, TENN. 

1894. 









Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, 
By W. P. Lovejoy, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




INTRODUCTION. 





To write a good book is to confer benefit upon all who read 
it and upon thousands who never see it. A book that discusses 
vital questions, abiding questions, in a candid, prayerful, and 
outspoken manner occupies high rank in many ways in which 
God addresses the minds and consciences of men. “The Mis¬ 
sion of the Church ” is of that class. 

It is to accord the work high merit to say that it is measura¬ 
bly free from the speculative and deals with practical questions 
in a practical way. And the unbiased reader will see that the 
deep truths of God’s word support the positions taken by the 
author. He will have successfully to controvert the major 
premises of the book or he will be obliged to consent that 
God is suffering loss and humanity lack because the Church 
does not enter upon that dominion that Christ designed it to 
possess. Both by suggestion and doctrinal statement the truth 
is taught that the only reason why the conquering power is not 
possessed is because the Church in its corporate life and in the 
lives of the individual membership is not meeting the condi¬ 
tions upon which the Holy Ghost is promised it. Few, if any, 
will question that the time has come to put the emphasis upon 
that truth of the redemptive scheme. 

Certain it is that such a view challenges the best thought, 
the most earnest, prayerful consideration. Here it will be 
well for those who honor God and desire the salvation of the 
world to proclaim a fast and seek guidance and equipment 
from above. 

Every thoughtful reader of the New Testament has felt that 
he had come upon great things when he read the Saviour’s 
words: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 

( 3 ) 


4 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.” Such scripture establishes the high 
dignity of the Church as a teacher. It avouches its right to 
dominate the public heart and conscience and to be the might¬ 
iest force in human history. Not by fagot and fire, to be sure, 
not by any but the force of truth when the divinity of the word 
is addressed to the divinity of the soul. The life of the Church 
is to be the expression of God. 

A just and proper conception of this truth casts upon the 
Church an encompassing responsibility and enkindles upon its 
altars that kind of fire that burned in the prophets’ bones. The 
lingering lesson of the Pentecost is that it was not merely phe¬ 
nomenal and evidential, but that it was the voice and tone of 
the right state of the Church, and hence was to be continuous. 
Every genuine and effective movement in the history of the 
people of God from that day till this, in a greater or less degree, 
repeated the history of Pentecost. 

But to conclude this introduction. It is a contradiction of 
the plain words of scripture to maintain that God desires less 
than the salvation of all men. It would be an impeachment of 
the divine goodness and sincerity to maintain that God has 
failed to do all he could to advance the redemptive scheme on 
the earth. His Church was commissioned to go forth and dis¬ 
ciple all nations. 

Now it seems fair but severe on the Church to conclude that 
many and much, if not all, of the failures that attend its his¬ 
tory abide at its door. 

To this line of thought and reflection the author of “ The 
Mission of the Church ” leads his readers. He evades nothing, 
takes position boldly, and holds his ground well. 

His book will do much good. William D. Anderson. 

January i, 1894. 


CONTENTS 


Chapter I. Page 

Organization... 7 

Chapter II. 

The Church—What Is It?...*.. 12 

Chapter III. 

The Church—What Is It for?... 20 

Chapter IV. 

The Church and the Bible.... *.... 33 

Chapter V. 

The Church as Christ’s Witness..... 47 

Chapter Vi. 

The Church as Christ’s Witness (Continued). 59 

Chapter VII. 

The Church as Christ’s Witness (Continued). 71 

Chapter VIII. 

The Church as Teacher... 84 

Chapter IX. 

The Church as Savior. 97 

Chapter X. 

The Church and the Home. 128 

Chapter XI. 

The Church and Education. 149 

Chapter XII. 

The Church and the Sabbath. 171 














6 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


Chapter XIII. Page 

The Church and Popular Amusements. 193 

Chapter XIV. 

The Church and the Saloon. 219 

Chapter XV. 

The Church and Money. 242 

Chapter XVI. 

The Church Itself. 261 


l 






THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


CHAPTER I. 

ORGANIZATION. 

¥ HE Church is not a silent or an indifferent 
spectator in the midst of the stirring events 
that are going on in the world around it. In one 
way or another it contributes its strength to mak¬ 
ing the facts which the historian records. Among 
the institutions of the land even its enemies do 
not deny it a prominent place. Such is the po¬ 
sition of the Church that he who proposes to write 
a history of the times with the Church left out 
displays either a prejudice that is unpardonable 
or an ignorance for which no other qualifications, 
however brilliant, can atone. In every civilized 
land, in city and country, among all colors and 
races of people, the Church is found. Houses of 
worship are so thick that if the three-mile law, as 
it exists in some States, were faithfully enforced in 
the United States, prohibition of the sale of intox¬ 
icants would be well-nigh universal east of the 
Mississippi. 


( 7 ) 



8 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

The Church is here. What is it here for ? The 
political economist, as he seeks for the forces 
that have made our nineteenth century civiliza¬ 
tion, must answer this question. The moral phi¬ 
losopher, as he studies the practical problems of 
social life, cannot ignore it. The philanthropist 
who is earnestly striving to improve the physical 
condition of his fellow-men cannot push it aside. 
The statesman in his search for the agencies that 
have united to build up this government and are 
to furnish bulwarks for its support cannot over¬ 
look the Church. And the believer in a God and 
an eternal existence, most of all inquirers, must 
answer the question: What is the Church here for? 
Not only is the Church here, but it is organized. 
This is true of all movements that are seeking for 
success. Government is another word for organ¬ 
ized forces joined together for specific ends. The 
strength of any organization is the spirit which 
controls it and binds the various parts together. 
The union of the States is represented and made 
strong by the patriotic spirit which exists among 
the people. Disloyalty to the motive or principle 
or interest that binds the members together is a 
weakening force which needs only to be strength¬ 
ened to disrupt the union and dissolve the organ¬ 
ization. 


ORGANIZA TION. 


9 


If the Church be what its friends claim, if the 
object of its existence in the world be what its sup¬ 
porters affirm, no institution needs such a systemat¬ 
ic, thorough, compact organization. It is project¬ 
ed for all time. It is to “ go into all the world.” It 
undertakes to redeem a race. It opposes itself to 
all forms of vice as they are intrenched in human 
hearts, in human society, and in human govern¬ 
ment. It proposes to put such a force in humanity 
that the currents of its life shall turn from sin to ho¬ 
liness, from hell toward heaven. Its purpose is to 
reform men, reconstruct society, and regulate gov¬ 
ernment. It knocks at the door of every human 
enterprise and demands to be admitted to the place 
of director. It seeks admission into the secret 
places of the soul, that it may sweeten and purify 
the fountains of life. It claims the right to lay 
the foundation and raise to its place the capstone 
of every character. It insists that it have the di¬ 
rection of every life, from its incipiency to the end 
of probation. What shall be its conditions—the 
food it shall live on and the forces that shall touch 
and mold it? Never yet since the world was 
made was any movement projected on so gigantic 
a scale, so far-reaching in its purpose, so race-em 
bracing in its scope. It cannot be that the God 
of infinite wisdom has left so stupendous an under- 


IO 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


taking to a body of men with no force, no law, no 
principle uniting them into a strong organization. 
Nature itself teaches us that organization is a ne¬ 
cessity. Heat, air, and water combine together, 
each doing its own work and working in perfect 
harmony with the others, in producing the won¬ 
derful phenomena of flower, leaf, limb, and fruit 
in vegetable life. We may learn a useful lesson 
from the little borers that year by year pulverize 
the soil and prepare it for yielding the richest har¬ 
vests. Mr. Darwin thought the most valuable of 
these cultivators of the soil was the common earth¬ 
worm, which, in making its tunnel under ground, 
passes the earth through its own body. In this 
way, he estimated that in every four years the 
whole soil of a country must pass through the bod¬ 
ies of these humble workers. Prof. Drummond 
has told us that the white ants have a thorough or¬ 
ganization. “ There are,” he says, “ in each so¬ 
ciety a king and queen, neuters, workers, and sol¬ 
diers. The king and queen have to do exclusive¬ 
ly with peopling the colony. The one duty of 
the queen is to lay eggs, and she will lay 80,000 
in twenty-four hours, or 30,000,000 in a year. 
The neuters carry off the eggs to where they are 
hatched, and attend to the infant progeny as they 
are developed. To every one hundred workers 


ORGANIZA TION. 


I 


in a colony there are two soldiers. The workers 
are blind and unarmed, good for nothing save to 
work; but if attacked, these soldiers, which are 
larger and stronger and armed by nature with 
scythelike jaws, advance to the fray and clear the 
ground of foes; and meanwhile the unconscious 
and unmolested builders carry on their work.” 

Whatever of force the Church has for redeem¬ 
ing this world from the curse of sin and lifting 
men to Christ needs to be organized. However 
vast its resources of men and means, the best for 
humanity cannot be achieved until this is done. 


CHAPTER II. 


THE CHURCH-WHAT IS IT? 

{ F the point insisted on in the previous chapter be 
well taken—namely, that organization is a neces¬ 
sity for effective work and for the highest success— 
before proceeding further with this discussion a 
question of the first importance must be deter¬ 
mined—that is, what is the Church? 

It will aid us materially in giving an intelligent 
answer to this inquiry first of all to settle, if we 
can, another matter—what the Church is not. 
The Church is not a human institution; it is not a 
visible organization. A house of worship is not a 
Church. A company of men and women, calling 
themselves by the same name and holding to a 
common form of doctrinal belief, is not a Church. 
Orders and officers, the proclamation of the truth 
even, as it is revealed in the word of God by men 
who have been solemnly set apart by their breth¬ 
ren for the work of the ministry, the administration 
of the sacraments, bulky creeds and lengthy ritu¬ 
als, songs .and chants, recitations and responses, 
ministerial millinery and pulpit performances— 

these, one and all, are not the Church, nor any 

( 12 ) 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS ITt 13 

part of it. A so-called religious organization, with 
five thousand preachers and one million members, 
ten thousand houses of worship, and schools and 
colleges by the score, its publishing houses, and 
Advocates and Heralds and Reporters by the 
thousands, its Sunday school agencies and tract 
depositories, its missionary boards for home and 
foreign work—an organization with such a vast 
number of members and such a wealth of agen¬ 
cies for pushing its way in the world, no matter by 
what name it calls itself, is not the Church. 

There is no mistake more damaging to spiritual 
life nor hurtful to the cause of Christ than to sup¬ 
pose that what we see is the Church. Vast multi¬ 
tudes are deceiving themselves with the reflection 
that there is some mystical virtue in belonging to 
some human religious organization. It is of a piece 
with the old heresy of baptismal regeneration and 
episcopal confirmation. 

As a matter of fact, where rites and ceremonies 
are multiplied, and literal, habitual observance of 
them required, the tendency is to exalt the mate¬ 
rial to the place of the spiritual, the visible is sub¬ 
stituted for the invisible, and “ bodily exercise ” 
takes the place of spiritual worship. As might 
have been expected, it has come to pass that, in 
the popular mind, the Church which has the lar- 


14 the mission of the church. 

gest number, the wealthiest and most influential 
members, the most eloquent preacher, the most 
splendid soprano, the divinest alto, the deepest 
bass, the softest cushioned pews and the most at¬ 
tractive appointments is the strongest Church. 
While the “little church around the corner” is 
too small to be noticed, too weak to be feared or 
counted. 

But granting much of this to be true, may not a 
so-called religious organization have acquired a 
just claim to be called the true Church by a con¬ 
tinuous existence back to the apostolic age, or to 
any other date in the remote past? But wherein 
consists the difference in nature between the sprig 
that has just burst forth from the acorn and the 
monarch of the forest that has withstood the storms 
of a hundred years? This claim to recognition as 
a Church rests on no other basis than that already 
examined—the material. There are institutions 
that are hoary with age that are likewise rank 
with corruption. The baronial castles of En¬ 
gland’s nobility have stood for centuries, the home 
of luxury and vice, of happiness and suffering 
strangely intermingled; but they are the same 
granite structures. By no process of evolution 
can the things which for ages men have associated 
with Churches—creeds and crosses, pulpits and 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT? 15 

pews, songs and sacraments, rites and rituals, 
names and numbers—be transformed into a 
Church. 

Where, then, shall we look for the Church? No 
trouble if we will open our eyes. “ My kingdom,” 
says the Master, “ is not of this world.” St. Paul, 
writing to the Romans, who knew nothing of a 
worship separated from temples, says “ the king¬ 
dom of God is . . . righteousness, and peace, 

and joy in the Holy Ghost.” To the same effect 
are the words of our Lord to Peter: “Upon this 
rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell 
shall not prevail against it.” Whatever Christ in¬ 
tended to teach by this declaration, he did not mean 
that his Church should rest on Peter, for more than 
once he displayed all the weakness that belongs 
to common mortals. No, the Church is a spiritual 
structure from foundation to capstone, and includ¬ 
ing both. It cannot be seen or touched. It is the 
body of the Lord Jesus Christ, composed of men 
and women who are united to him who is the Head 
by the tie of life. Not those who believe the his¬ 
tory which tells us that a wonderful being appeared 
upon the earth some eighteen hundred and odd 
years ago, who did many marvelous things such 
as only a God can do, who fulfilled prophecies 
which he foretold and some which were predicted 


16 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

concerning him (doubtless devils believe as much); 
but all who, having come to Christ, have been deliv¬ 
ered from the guilt and dominion of sin by the pow¬ 
er of the Holy Ghost, raised from death unto life, 
and who now live by “ the faith of the Son of God ” 
—these, wherever found on the face of the earth or 
by whatever name called, constitute the true Church 
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other. 

What, then, is the connection between the real 
Church and human organizations which are called 
Churches? I have already shown that organiza¬ 
tion is a necessity; but organization of what? Of 
spiritual things into a material corporation? Of 
invisible forces into a visible organism? It has 
already been made plain that a material thing 
cannot be transformed into an immaterial. Nei- 
•ther can an immaterial substance be changed 
into a material something that can be seen and 
handled. We are brought thus face to face with 
another impossibility, and the question recurs: 
What is the connection between the true Church 
and human institutions which men call Churches? 
What we call a Church is representative; that and 
nothing more. It is a part of the true Church in 
so far as itembodies in the life of its membership 
the spirit of him for whom it stands. In this re¬ 
spect the visible Church differs in no sense from 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT? 17 

any other institution or organization. A company 
is organized with certain clearly defined purposes. 
It is justly entitled to be called by its chartered 
name so long as it faithfully carries out the object 
for which it was created. As soon as it departs 
from the provisions of its constitution it ceases to 
be that specific company. A human organization 
called a Church is a correct representation of the 
true Church of Christ so long as it faithfully ex¬ 
emplifies the life and teachings of him who said: 
“ The kingdom of God is within you.” 

So closely does Christ identify himself with the 
Church that no one, he affirms, can touch one of 
his disciples without touching him. Whoso feeds 
the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits the sick 
renders this service to him. He is the vine, and 
the individual members of the Church are the 
branches that draw their life from him. He that 
heareth his messengers heareth him. Paul says: 
“We are ambassadors for Christ.” Ambassa¬ 
dors are such only as they faithfully represent the 
governments which send them. Whatever Christ 
is to the world, that the Church must be as his 
representative, or it ceases to be a true Church. 
A spiritual being himself, his Church must be a 
spiritual institution. 

It is not surprising that even his immediate dis- 
2 


18 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

ciples failed to understand the nature of his king¬ 
dom, they were so accustomed to look upon the 
kingdom of God on earth as a material affair, 
with its king and armies and subjects. Even 
when they were assembled for the last time be¬ 
fore his ascension, the men nearest to him said, 
“ Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the 
kingdom to Israel?”—meaning a temporal mon¬ 
archy. It is precisely at this point the difference 
between human and divine institutions appears. 
The tie that binds men together in human associa¬ 
tions is created by earthly interests alone, and for 
the most part affects the material, or at the farthest, 
the aesthetic side of life. Even those benevolent 
societies whose object (praiseworthy as far as it 
goes) is to improve the physical condition of the 
working classes, deal with the stream rather than 
with the fountain, with gutters and slums and sinks 
of vice rather than with the causes which produce 
them. Self-interest enters largely into all efforts 
for the amelioration of suffering humanity, where 
the end sought to be reached does not go to the 
length of a thorough reformation of life. And as 
long as property and human life are imperiled by 
the presence of vice men will combine, incident¬ 
ally to reform or confine the criminal classes, with 
self-protection as the controlling motive. 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT? 19 

The Church is organized upon a different basis. 
Its foundation is not brick, nor stone, nor solid 
ground. It does not get its strength from the 
wealth or prominence of those who worship at its 
altars. Its power as an organization for making 
character is not derived from the morality of those 
who support it. The tie that binds its members 
into one body of absolute unity is not self-interest 
or a purpose inspired by self. It is, indeed, at 
the other extreme from self. “If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself ” is the uni¬ 
versal law. At the sepulcher of self is born the 
bond that binds men and women together in a one¬ 
ness of life whose dominating spirit is the Christ, 
and the controlling motive, love to God and love to 
men. This is the Church . 


CHAPTER III. 

THE CHURCH-WHAT IS IT FOR? 


TIN the previous chapter the statement was made 
* that the Church is the representative of Christ 
in the world. To the explanation and elabora¬ 
tion of that statement the present and succeeding 
chapters will be devoted. 

We may not fully understand the reasons that 
controlled the divine council in framing the plan 
of redemption for the salvation of a lost world as 
we have it. Why was it necessary for Christ to be 
born of a woman (I take it that it was a necessity 
or some other method would have been employed) 
to have all the experience of a human being, to 
live and suffer in the flesh, and, incidentally, be 
the victim of the world’s sin and hate? Could 
not the demands of the law and the wants of hu¬ 
manity have been met by the appearance of Christ 
in the flesh for an hour and his speedy exit in a 
voluntary death? These are questions which the 
profoundest philosophy has not been able to an¬ 
swer satisfactorily. As long as the plan of re¬ 
demption is regarded as a scheme only to save 
men from hell, the difficulties surrounding this 
( 20 ) 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FORf 


21 


whole question will continue to pile up until the 
divine purpose will be hid in impenetrable dark¬ 
ness. Deliverance from eternal punishment, I 
undertake to say, occupies a very small place in 
the plan for human salvation. A long way this 
side of that fearful catastrophe is the existence of 
sin which, like the boa of the tropics, with its 
mighty coils around its victim, enfolds man’s spir¬ 
itual nature in its deadly embrace. Its paralyzing 
touch is on thought and feeling and appetite. In 
every realm of human life its power is absolute 
and acknowledged. How far its influence reach¬ 
es into the kingdoms below man revelation has 
not informed us, nor can observation guide to a 
well-supported conclusion. 

The redemption of our race and each individual 
member of it from the fearful disabilities entailed 
by sin, and the building up of spiritual characters 
fashioned after the divine pattern are objects far 
more worthy of a God than deliverance from eter¬ 
nal torments. To rescue a child from vicious sur¬ 
roundings is a work of love and worthy of com¬ 
mendation, but to take that same child and lead it 
up into a new world and a new life where Chris¬ 
tian forces may mold a splendid character is a far 
more praiseworthy as well as a more difficult work. 
Who will say that the plan under which the 


22 


HE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


Church is working is not the wisest and best? 
We believe it is the wisest for the following rea¬ 
sons: 

i. With deep humility and becoming reverence 
we say it, God can save men through men better 
than he can without the intervention of such 
agents. A man who has felt all the horrors of 
condemnation and has realized all the thrill of 
conscious deliverance can reach and lead to Christ 
a fellow-man who might be startled, but would re¬ 
main unmoved by the visit of an angel. When 
the Saviour cast the legion of devils out of the de¬ 
moniac of Gadara, feeling that he could do noth¬ 
ing with the people of that province, he left their 
coast; but told the man, now clothed and in his 
right mind, to go home to his friends and ‘‘tell 
them how great things the Lord hath done for 
thee, and hath had compassion on thee.’’ Evi¬ 
dently the people who knew him and had seen 
him often in a frenzy, seeing the wonderful 
change and learning how it had come about, would 
believe in Christ sooner than they would by the 
preaching of Christ himself. 

Men demand evidence that appeals to their 
senses. A man proposes to introduce a remedy 
for whose virtues he makes large claims. How 
does he proceed? Not upon his unsupported 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FOR? 23 

statement, but he procures testimonials from a 
dozen well-known persons who have been cured 
by this medicine. Our Lord had in mind this 
trait of human nature when he said: “ Though ye 
believe not me, believe the works.’’ To his disci¬ 
ples just after instituting the supper he said: “ The 
works that I do ye shall do also, and greater 
works than these shall ye do.” These are not the 
words of a fanatic—they simply state facts which 
Christ knew to be facts. Our business is to find 
out what they mean. He certainly did not mean 
that men should of themselves do greater things 
than a God could do. Even with God one method 
of doing a thing is better than another. There is 
some best way which he always adopts. Christ’s 
meaning, therefore, at this place could be none 
other than this: “I can best accomplish my pur¬ 
pose in saving men by sending the omnipresent 
Spirit, who is subject to no physical limitations, 
but who will be in you, and dwell with you, and 
work through you.” Christ was a man, and, like 
every other man, could not be in two places at the 
same time. His movements were necessarily gov¬ 
erned, in large measure, by his physical condi¬ 
tions. The “ expediency ” of his going away con¬ 
sisted, therefore, not only in the fact that the Holy 
Spirit would not come without it, but in the more 


24 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

important fact that the Church needed an omni¬ 
present Helper, whose movements were not sub¬ 
ject to physical conditions. Such a Comforter is 
the Holy Ghost who has come in fulfillment of 
Christ’s promise. 

2. Another reason for the existence of the 
Church is the development of spiritual life and 
character in the Church itself. Our Saviour’s in¬ 
junction to Peter—“ when thou art converted, 
strengthen the brethren”—is the gospel of help¬ 
fulness in epitome. The parable of the grain of 
corn germinating, springingup, and producing first 
the blade, then the stalk, then the ear, and finally 
the full-grown ear of corn, is a vivid illustration of 
the process of Christian growth. St. Paul, in a 
passage of wondrous beauty and power (Eph. iv. 
11-16), has given us a picture of how the Chris¬ 
tian Church is builded: “And he gave some, 
apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangel¬ 
ists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the per¬ 
fecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, 
for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all 
come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowl¬ 
edge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto 
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: 
that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to 
and fro, and carried about with every wind of 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FORP 


2 5 


doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning crafti¬ 
ness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but 
speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him 
in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from 
whom the whole body fitly joined together and 
compacted by that which every joint supplieth, ac¬ 
cording to the effectual working in the measure of 
every part, maketh increase of the body unto the 
edifying of itself in love.” 

When the work of creation was completed—that 
part at least recorded in the book of Genesis— 
God looked upon it with divine complacency and 
pronounced it “very good.” Out of chaos the 
infinite hand wrought order and beauty. The 
manifold forms of life, animal and vegetable, phys¬ 
ical and mental, illustrated in the infinite variety of 
tint and hue, in fruit and flower, exhibited in the 
song and flight of birds, in the endless diversity of 
movement among the animal creation, and, above 
all, finding its highest and fullest manifestation in 
the man created in the divine image, with a spir¬ 
itual, Godlike, uplooking nature, whose richest, 
most real enjoyment comes from communion with 
his maker—as God looked upon this exhibition of 
his own handiwork, it is not irreverent to say that 
he was well pleased. But if 

It was great to speak a world from naught, 

It was greater to redeem. 


26 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

To create a world and fill it with an endless va¬ 
riety of vegetable and animal life, subject to the 
domination of beings made in his own image re¬ 
quired no suffering. To bring order out of chaos 
and beauty out of deformity and set the whole in 
a picture that none but the divine hand could paint 
stirred no pity, excited no sympathy in the divine 
heart. But to undo the work of ruin which sin had 
wrought, to bring back this eccentric star to its 
place among the shining orbs of the moral universe, 
to bring spiritual life from spiritual death, to wipe 
out the lines of vice and shame and blackest crime 
which sin had traced in every fiber of man’s na¬ 
ture—this is a work that required the death of the 
Son of God. Saving men from the dominion and, 
as far as possible, from the effects of sin in this 
life, and building them up in 44 righteousness and 
true holiness ” is the task which God has under¬ 
taken to accomplish. Whether sin had ever 
entered our world or not, life in the flesh means 
trial, conflict. To develop the highest type of hu¬ 
man character trial is necessary. The 44 thou 
shalt” and 44 thou shalt not” of the Eden history 
mean trial or they mean nothing. The design of 
trial is the development of character or it is wicked. 
The trial of Abraham was to make his faith so 
strong that he would never again doubt God in 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FOR? 27 

anything, and God selected the best means to se¬ 
cure this result. 

The view just presented needs to be emphasized. 
There is an idea, all too prevalent, that the only use 
God has for the Church in the world is to present 
to men as reasons for right living motives drawn 
from beyond the grave; in other words, the object 
of staying in this world at all, so far as the religious 
side of living is concerned, is to escape hell and 
reach heaven. This view allows the practice of 
all the sin that is compatible with just getting to 
heaven and enjoins no more holiness than is need¬ 
ful to keep one out of hell. It makes provision, 
on the one hand, for running worldly schemes and 
gratifying fleshly appetites to the full length of tol¬ 
erance, while on the other, it practices enough re¬ 
ligious performances on Sunday and at odd times 
to satisfy the demands of a feeble conscience. In 
other words, if there was no hell and no fear of 
punishment, this view of religion would be without 
a motive for religious living at all, and the scheme 
of redemption would have no reason to present for 
embracing it that would offset and overcome the 
selfish inclinations of a depraved humanity. I 
would not weaken the motive to right living drawn 
from the fear of eternal punishment, but unless the 
Church gets men farther from hell than such a mo- 


28 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


tive has power to bring them the Church will have 
in it a lot of men every one of whom would be 
a sinner if he were not afraid he would suffer 
eternally for it. At the bar of God and in the 
court of morals every one who loves sin is a guilty 
sinner, though he may not commit the overt act. 
Else what does St. John mean when he says: “ If 
any man love the world, the love of the Father is 
not in him.” “And if any man love not the Lord,” 
says Paul, “let him be Anathema.” 

Conduct that is grounded in fear or the hope of 
reward as its only or its chief motive is lacking in 
those higher elements of character that belong to 
pure, unselfish natures. Such a motive is essen¬ 
tially selfish, and its effects are seen in the purpose 
and effort to advance personal interests. Con¬ 
stantly Christ, in his teachings, spoke of the pres¬ 
ent life, with all that belongs to it, as of the utmost 
importance. Take the Sermon on the Mount, in 
which we have an epitome of his doctrinal and 
ethical teachings. There are but two or three brief 
allusions to the state beyond the grave. The Beat¬ 
itudes, as they are called, with the blessings prom¬ 
ised, refer chiefly to this life. “ Blessed are the 
poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be 
comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FORt 29 

inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they 
shall be filled,” etc. It would be a gross perver¬ 
sion of his meaning to refer these for their fulfill¬ 
ment to.the future life. No portions of his teach¬ 
ings have in them more of profound wisdom than 
the parables, and these, almost without exception, 
have a direct present application to personal reli¬ 
gious character. A sower went forth to sow. 
Some seeds fell by the wayside, some in stony 
ground, some among thorns, and some on good 
ground. Some did nothing, some a little, some 
w r as choked, while one out of four did well. 
When? The very idea I am combating will go 
far toward explaining the large amount of failure 
and the small degree of success—namely, the 
chief, if not the only, business of the Church is to 
keep people out of hell and get them to heaven. 
Meantime, the cultivation of spiritual powers and 
the development cf Christian character into the 
“fullness of Christ” are matters of small impor¬ 
tance. Such a view is unworthy an immortal 
being. 

Take another parable: “ The kingdom of 
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, 
and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole 
was leavened.” Where? “ Beyond the grave,” 


30 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


say they who make excuses for a low type of piety 
if not for immoral living. What chance has the 
leaven of divine grace to permeate the entire spir¬ 
itual being when the notion prevails that the chief 
business of the Church is to save men from hell? 

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto 
treasure hid in a field; the which when a man 
hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth 
and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. ” 
Only they who look upon the Church as a divine¬ 
ly appointed agency for saving men from sin in 
the flesh and for developing in them the highest 
types of Christian character will regard the attain¬ 
ment of a Christlike nature such a precious her¬ 
itage that they will be willing to “ sell all ” for its 
possession. If those who believe that the chief 
business of the Church is to save men from hell ever 
earnestly seek the “ pearl of great price” at all, it 
will be when the things of this world no longer 
furnish food to gratify fleshly appetite, and the 
fires of the pit send up their lurid light to fill the 
soul of the dying sinner with unspeakable terror. 

It is this view of the mission of the Church in 
the world—saving men from sin and building up 
Christly characters—that fills the angels with re¬ 
joicing and the heart of the Son of God with sat¬ 
isfaction. It is said that there is rejoicing in heav- 


THE CHURCH—WHAT IS IT FOR? 31 

en when one sinner repents, but when the gates 
swing open to receive the convoy of angels with 
Lazarus the beggar, or the chariot of fire as it 
wheeled into the eternal city with Elijah the proph¬ 
et, no note of rejoicing or sound of heavenly music 
is heard. It is a grander work to save a soul 
from the defilement and disability and death of 
sin than to house that same soul in heaven safe 
from sin forever. 

Until the heresy is driven from among us that 
the chief business of the Church is to keep men 
out of hell and to get them to heaven many forms 
of sin, deadly in themselves, as all sins are, and 
hurtful to spiritual life, will be tolerated and given 
a quasi indorsement. This, because of a certain 
sort of gentility which they are supposed to have 
by being found in otherwise respectable company. 
The line will not be drawn sharply, either in 
thought or practice, between virtue and vice, be¬ 
tween what is helpful and what is hurtful to spirit¬ 
ual life. If the purest of form of right living is 
not of the utmost importance, if the highest type 
of Christian character is not essential, that which 
leads to and produces them—namely, absolute 
separation from all that is sinful—will not be em¬ 
ployed. But if the highest joy that can come to 
Christ as the Bridegroom is to consist in present- 


32 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

ing his bride to the Father, pure and spotless, 
“without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” and 
if to be the bride of Christ is to enjoy the highest 
honor that can come to an immortal soul, then will 
this thought kindle in the human heart the holiest 
ambition and inspire the highest motive to be like 
Christ and to be ready to meet him when he 
comes. In the presence of such a conception sin 
becomes utterly sinful and every form of vice de¬ 
testable. 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE, 


SCHEME so stupendous and far-reaching as 



u®* the final redemption of multiplied millions of 
human beings, involving interests whose magni¬ 
tude and worth are beyond human calculation, and 
stretching across the boundary line of time into 
eternity—such a scheme, to successfully work it, 
requires the direction of infinite wisdom. No or¬ 
ganization, no movement, no sect, no school has 
been without its creed, its basis of doctrine, its 
terms of agreement, its statement of principles. 
Nor have these several organizations come before 
the public bidding for the suffrages of men with¬ 
out trained teachers, to expound and give author¬ 
itative interpretation of their beliefs. These prin¬ 
ciples and dogmas have, sooner or later, been 
accepted or rejected as they have been found to 
rest in reason and truth or the contrary. 

If the Church of God is such an organization 
as I have indicated, the common judgment of man¬ 
kind demands: Has it a creed, a code of laws, a 
text-book, a set of principles which it proposes to 
teach? If so, where is it and what is it? In re- 


3 


( 33 ) 


34 THE mission of the church. 

ply the Church holds up the Bible, which, it is 
claimed, is the word of God. But how can it be 
known that this book contains the will of God? 
With perfect honesty and with perfect confidence 
the Church says: “ Here is the book; take it, study 
it, examine it critically, apply it to every part of 
man’s nature and to every department of human 
life, put it to every test by which doctrines and 
creeds and dogmas and all literary productions are 
tried. If it comes up to the required standard, ac¬ 
cept it; if not, reject it.” What is the result of the 
latest, most searching, even the most unfriendly 
criticism ? It is this: This book which we call the 
Bible is pronounced the word of God and contains 
his will for the government of man. That being 
true, it is an infallible and the only infallible 
guide in the moral conduct of man. If it is infal¬ 
lible, it is final, perfect, unchangeable. In this 
respect it presents a marked contrast to all human 
philosophies and codes of laws. The text-books 
of a half century ago in many branches of instruc¬ 
tion are full of statements of fact which increasing 
knowledge has proved to be no fact at all. Fresh 
discoveries, making sad havoc of cherished scien¬ 
tific theories, fill the investigator with despair of 
ever reaching that which is certain. Whether all 
diseases have their peculiar microbes, each of a 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. 35 

certain color or size, and are propagated by inha¬ 
lation and physical contact, is enlisting the pro- 
foundest skill of medical experts all over the world. 
What is the precise form in which life made its 
appearance on our earth—the primordial cell, pro¬ 
toplasm, or bathybius—our scientific friends have 
not been able to inform us. In all these depart¬ 
ments there is doubt, mystery, uncertainty. It 
could not be otherwise when we have no infallible 
teacher. 

But here is a text-book nearly nineteen hundred 
years old, some of it four thousand years old, a 
code of laws, a divine revelation, a system of doc¬ 
trine which the closest analysis, the most searching 
inquiry of the most thoroughly trained intellects 
the world has furnished in twenty centuries pro¬ 
nounce to be what it claims to be: an inspired 
revelation of God and of his will to men. It is no 
part of my purpose to enter the lists in defense of 
the inspiration or authorship of particular portions 
of the Bible against the assaults of what is called 
the “higher criticism.’’ Those who belong to 
this school are devout students of the word of 
God, and their object seems to be to clear away 
from the inspired record as far as possible all the 
mistakes that men have made in the critical study 
of the text, and thus open the way for its accept- 


36 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

ance. While these gentlemen are working at this 
problem, this much may be stated for the comfort 
of all who have faith in the infallible word of God' 
The fight between the evolutionist and the theolo¬ 
gian as to the antiquity of man has at last been 
practically settled in favor of the theologian. On 
this subject a recent writer has this to say: “ Dr. 
Southall concludes that man's first appearance on 
the earth was about 6,600 years ago. Principal 
Dawson dates the appearance from 6,000 to 8,000 
years ago; and the Septuagint version of the 
Scriptures places it 7,290 years ago. As another 
instance, consider that recent investigation of 
monuments in Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia 
has demonstrated the truthfulness of the Biblical 
account of the dispersion of the races from the 
plains of Shinar at the time and in the manner in¬ 
dicated. One more instance: Infidel scholarship 
has regarded Ur of the Chaldees a mythological 
city, but the modern geographer has identified its 
site on the river Euphrates, and thus supplied a 
missing link in the biography of Abraham. If, 
then, geography, archaeology, and the monumen¬ 
tal and geological records are establishing question¬ 
able facts or solving the enigmas of the Bible, is it 
unreasonable to infer that whatever is still in dis¬ 
pute may finally be sustained or disposed of in the 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. 


37 


same scientific and philosophic way? One thing 
is certain, and that is that scientific research , when 
completed along a given line , has in not a single 
instance overturned or even shaken the Biblical ac¬ 
count; but , on the other hand , it has triumphantly 
vindicated and explained it.” * 

I have already said that every creed, code, and 
system has its authorized teacher. The state¬ 
ments of the scientist, where they rest on acknowl¬ 
edged facts, are accepted without question. The 
astronomer foretells an eclipse of the sun or moon, 
and calculates with mathematical accuracy the 
day, hour, and minute the eclipse will begin and 
end. The lawyer delivers an opinion as to the 
meaning of the law and its application in a given 
case. The doctor analyzes a drug, diagnoses a 
case, and gives the results. In all these instances 
the opinions rendered are accepted as authoritative 
as far as they are based on fact. In most of them 
there is an element of doubt arising from a lack of 
perfect knowledge. How different is the case 
with the word of God and the application of its 
teachings to the wants and conditions of men. 
He who teaches the Bible feels assured that he is 


* Plato and Paul, p. 748. The Moabite Stone and the Si- 
loam Inscription, recently discovered, confirm and supplement 
the Biblical account of the reigns of Ahaziah and Joram. 



38 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

teaching absolute truth. But the objection is 
raised that no two branches of the Church under¬ 
stand the Bible alike. The answer is at hand: 
The points wherein the denominations differ are of 
minor importance—they do not determine men’s 
destiny. On all the fundamental doctrines that 
affect man’s relation to God and his immortality 
they are a unit. More, in their interpretation of 
the Scriptures, without exception, they are agreed 
as to the character of what among men helps and 
what hurts spiritual life. 

That everything in the Bible can be understood 
is not affirmed. It may be that some things cannot 
be understood now , not because of any inherent 
difficulty in the things themselves, but because we 
have not yet reached that degree of spiritual 
development which is required to understand 
them. It may not be possible to learn them in the 
flesh. It is enough for us to know that they do 
not contradict our reason. With regard, therefore, 
to the Bible as the deposition of infallible truth and 
the relation of the Church to it as the divinely ap¬ 
pointed interpreter of the Scriptures, we affirm the 
following propositions: 

i. It is reasonable to suppose that men called to 
and specially fitted for the office of teachers in the 
Church are better prepared than others to inter- 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. 39 

pret the mind of the Spirit touching matters that 
belong to the spiritual life. 

2. Agreement of all evangelical denominations 
of Christians as to a given interpretation reduces 
the probabilities that such interpretation is incor¬ 
rect to the minimum. 

3. Reason demands that a revelation which pro¬ 
poses to furnish infallible directions for man’s right 
living and his safe exit from this world shall be 
easily understood. Such is the word of God. It 
would be a fatal objection to the divine origin of 
the Bible if it were obscure in its teaching con¬ 
cerning those things that vitally affect the spirit¬ 
ual life. 

From the standpoint of reason it would be an 
unanswerable argument against the divine origin 
of the whole redemptive scheme if, after a revela¬ 
tion has been given to man, no provisions had 
been made either for interpreting or proclaiming 
it. This objection has been removed in the oft- 
repeated instructions of Christ to the whole body 
of disciples in such passages as “Ye are the 
light of the world,” “ ye are the salt of the earth,” 
“ye shall be my witnesses unto the uttermost 
part of the earth,” and in the special training 
which he gave to the twelve to fit them for teach¬ 
ing and leading the people, crowning it all with his 


40 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

last command, “ Go into all the world, and preach 
my gospel to every creature, and lo, I am with you 
alway.” 

Nor are we left in doubt as to who are to be the 
heralds, the proclaimers of the mind of Christ, the 
teachers of men in matters of morals. From the 
day when the Lord went to heaven, the divine ar¬ 
rangement by which men have been called and set 
apart to the work of preaching the gospel has 
been generally indorsed by the Church. None 
but those who have felt the unmistakable touch of 
the divine hand separating them for the work of 
the ministry can appreciate the words of Paul: 
“Woe is me if I preach not the gospel! ” The 
fearful responsibilities that gather about the work 
of a minister invest his position with awful solem¬ 
nity. He labors for souls as one “ that must give 
account/’ He dare not use “untempered mor¬ 
tar” in his work. He represents two worlds. 
He is the ambassador of heaven’s King and he is 
a human being living in time. Not for rhetorical 
effect, but with the force of eternal truth, he is com¬ 
pared to a watchman whose vigilant eye keeps the 
city in safety and discovers the approach of the 
enemy. 

Considered in all of its relations to men, to time 
and eternity, in importance, in its present and far- 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE . 41 

reaching effects, there is no work that takes pre¬ 
cedence of the work of a minister of the gospel. 
With no semblance of priestly assumption it may 
be said that he stands, in some respects, nearer to 
God than any other man. The high priest, the 
minister of Jehovah, alone was permitted to enter 
the holy of holies. The priest stood between the 
people and the Lord. Christ said to Peter: “I will 
give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: 
and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose 
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” The prelatical 
interpretation put upon these words by those who 
arrogate to themselves divine prerogatives we ut¬ 
terly repudiate. They are quoted here to call at¬ 
tention to this fact: Christ was here speaking to 
his apostles, or at least to one of them—men 
whom he had been training for the ministry for 
two years and more. By these words some power 
was conferred on them which other disciples did 
not possess. At the very least, Jesus must have 
meant to confer upon these chosen men the power 
to expound and proclaim the gospel to the people. 
What else it is not needful here to inquire. 

When we think of the issues involved in the 
work of the ministry—the destinies of souls, the 
power of the Church to lead men to Christ, the 


4 2 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


proclaiming of the law of God touching all moral 
questions as they affect men in all relations of life, 
we are not surprised that not now and then, but 
frequently, these men of God cry out: “Who is 
sufficient for these things? ” No wonder they are 
men of prayer and spend much of their time clos¬ 
eted with God. No wonder that ofttimes they 
walk along the streets and the highways of the 
country and sometimes enter the pulpit with sad 
faces and heavy hearts. Like the Lord, many of 
them are men of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
Under such circumstances is it not the grossest 
injustice, the most heartless cruelty to charge 
them, as is sometimes done, with spite or spleen or 
malice when in the fear of God and with a bleed¬ 
ing heart they denounce in plain terms social cus¬ 
toms that poison the lives of the young and sap 
the foundation of spirituality? This raises the 
question, What is the Church to teach? Suppose 
the clamor that comes up from various quarters 
for a milder gospel, for more love and less law, 
more mercy and less fire, more heaven and less 
hell, more of the flowers of hope and less of the 
ashes of despair, more of fleshly indulgence and 
less of self-denial, more of worldliness and less of 
Christlikeness—suppose this demand should be 
heeded, what then? The Bible, the only guide 


THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. 43 

book that points out the way through this world to 
the next, would be discarded, the pulpit would be 
a place for voicing the wishes of a vitiated taste 
and a corrupt humanity rather than for proclaim¬ 
ing the will of a holy God, the Church would be 
the leader in social depravity, and purity and holi¬ 
ness and a sanctified life would be a hiss and a 
byword in the most sacred places of the house of 
God. Had not this actually occurred in the Jew¬ 
ish Church when our Lord entered the temple and 
found there the money changers and those who 
bought and sold doves? With a whip of small 
cords he drove out these desecrators of the tem¬ 
ple, and said: “It is written, My house shall be 
called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a 
den of thieves.’’ 

Those who persist in attacking the pulpit do not 
know what they are doing. They are making an 
assault upon the only power that furnishes protec¬ 
tion to the business they are engaged in. If the 
preachers could be “ scourged back into their pul¬ 
pits,” away from prohibition contests and political 
campaigns and King Solomon shows and cir¬ 
cuses and dances and theaters and wine suppers 
and card parties, society would have no safe¬ 
guard, the purity of our women no protection, and 
the sanctity of our homes no bulwark. Have 


44 THE mission of the church. 

these critics never considered the facts that no 
Church ever existed without a preacher; that 
no Church has ever been established without a 
preacher; that no people have ever been Chris¬ 
tianized without a preacher? Stop the mouths of 
preachers, and you close the doors of your church¬ 
es. The grass will never grow up in the walk to 
a church as long as it has a preacher. But silence 
the preacher, and the church will become a home 
for bats and owls. Every interest of humanity, 
business, trade, commerce, government, society, 
peace, prosperity—all demand that the preacher 
shall not be hushed. More, if there were no di¬ 
vine command, these interests require that in his 
utterances he shall be untrammeled by human in¬ 
terference.* 

What is the Church to teach through its minis¬ 
ters? The word of God, the doctrines, truths, 
and facts found in the Bible. Such are: the de¬ 
pravity of human nature, the universal need of a 
Saviour, the atonement made by our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the necessity of repentance, and faith as 


*The intelligent reader will remember that this statement is 
modified by the fact that every preacher must be the represent¬ 
ative of the Church to which he belongs. As such he is con¬ 
trolled in his utterances by the creed of that Church so long as 
he remains in its communion. 



THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE. 45 

the conditions of pardon, the necessity of a life of 
righteousness to retain the favor of God and to 
enter heaven at last, the witness of the Spirit, per¬ 
sonal accountability to God for all we do, the end 
of probation at death, the possibility of apostasy, 
an everlasting heaven and an endless hell. Can a 
minister of the gospel, having received his orders 
to preach whatsoever the Lord has commanded, 
pick and choose what he likes to preach and pass 
by what is distasteful to him? As well expect a 
sanitarian physician to pass unnoticed the fever¬ 
breeding piles of filth in the alleys of our cities be¬ 
cause he dislikes to speak of such things. As 
well expect the faithful surgeon to shut his eyes to 
the gangrene because he shrinks from amputating 
the diseased limb. Making due allowance for 
sporadic cases of hypocrisy and scoundrelism that 
now and then get into the pulpit, it is unquestion¬ 
ably true that men are preaching the gospel not 
for the money or position or influence or fame 
that it brings, but because they fear God and love 
men. And after all that has been said about the 
incompetency of the pulpit, that it is not abreast 
with the times, etc., preachers are as familiar with 
the Bible as doctors are with the materia medica 
or lawyers with Blackstone’s Commentaries. Be¬ 
sides, preachers have this advantage over all other 


4 6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

teachers (and it is an immense one): they know 
that what they teach is truth, subject to no emen¬ 
dation or revision. Other text-books are contin¬ 
ually undergoing revision and recasting, elimina¬ 
ting here and adding there. What is put in to-day 
may be cut out to-morrow. Not so with the Book 
God has appointed men to preach. It is as un¬ 
changeable as its Author, and will last to the end 
of time as a lamp unto our feet and a light unto 
our path. No man can proclaim what he is set 
to teach with such fearlessness as the preacher. 
No man can have such profound conviction of the 
absolute truth of what he utters. It is not the 
guess or the opinion of a fallible human being, 
but the “ thus saith the Lord ’ ’ of infinite wis¬ 
dom, with a sublime courage born of the absolute 
“ inerrancy ” of the word which he preaches. He 
delivers his message not “with enticing words of 
man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit 
and of power.” 


CHAPTER V. 

THE CHURCH AS CHRIST’S WITNESS. 


n SSEMBLED with his disciples on the heights 
of Olivet for the last time on earth, the Mas¬ 
ter delivers his final message. He “ commanded 
them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, 
but wait for the promise of the Father, which, 
saith he, ye have heard of me. . . .Ye 
shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto 
me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Sa¬ 
maria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” 
Here Christ makes the announcement that his fol¬ 
lowers shall be his witnesses. A statement full of 
meaning, and of very great importance. 

To constitute one a witness two things are nec¬ 
essary: knowledge and communication. One 
cannot testify to what he does not know, nor is 
his knowledge worth anything unless he tells it. 
The Church therefore is a witness for Christ in so 
far as it knows who and what he is and tells what 
it knows. The testimony of the Church to the 
truth of what it affirms is the strongest evidence 
that can be produced; for the Church is “the 

( 47 ) 


48 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

branch’’ of the living vine, it is 44 the bride” of 
Christ, 44 the body” of the Lord Jesus. The tes¬ 
timony of the Church is cumulative because its 
knowledge of Christ is continually increasing. 
As the Church is witness for Christ, we must an¬ 
swer the question: 44 Who and what is Christ?” 
Because this question has been asked and an¬ 
swered a thousand times is no reason for treating 
it as childish here. It is one of those questions 
that cannot be settled for all time. The Church 
is called upon to furnish a living testimony to a 
living Christ . What the Church has to say about 
Christ to-day furnishes the guide, and the only 
guide, by which the world forms an estimate of his 
character. The testimony of the current Church 
supplies the evidence by which the world of to-day 
makes up its verdict of Christ. 

44 Who is Christ?” the world demands. The 
Church is on the witness stand, and must make 
answer. Loose thinking here has done the cause 
of Christianity untold hurt. What with Secular¬ 
ism and Humanitarianism, to say nothing of Ag¬ 
nosticism and avowed Atheism, the divinity of 
Christ is fast disappearing from the beliefs and 
teachings of many who are regarded as leaders in 
theology. Thus far the Church has conquered 
error and sin by asserting with all the strength of 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 49 


profound conviction of its truth her unqualified faith 
in the Godhood of the Son. Whether eternally 
generated or coexisting in unity with the Father 
and the Holy Ghost from all eternity, the Church 
has accorded him a place of absolute equality as a 
divine person in the adorable Trinity. But beliefs 
of this sort require new statement or, at least, new 
forms of statement. Old methods of proof are not 
obsolete. They have supplied a felt want in their 
day, they have met the enemy and vanquished him; 
and the Church and the world have inherited the 
benefits of these victories. Still the questions are 
raised: “Is this the Christ? and is he the Son of 
God?” But the answer is not the same. New 
kinds of evidence are called for. This is an in¬ 
tensely practical age. The ethical rather than the 
doctrinal teachings of Christianity are brought 
forward as witnesses to the divinity of Christ. 
The contention is not so much about whether a 
Galilean peasant, named Jesus of Nazareth, lived 
some 1890 years ago—that is generally conceded 
(the myth theory is about abandoned as historical¬ 
ly absurd)—nor whether he wrought a few well- 
authenticated miracles.* 


* Prof. Huxley adopts a singular method of reasoning in his 
controversy with Dr. Wace. In undertaking to prove that 
Jesus did not work any of the miracles ascribed to him he 
4 



50 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

Not many who deny his divinity also deny that 
he wrought any miracles,* * but the ground has 
been shifted somewhat more to the human side of 
Christ for proof of his divinity. In addition, the 
demand now is for living, current testimony. 
What evidence does the Church offer now in proof 
of Christ’s divinity that no age before has fur¬ 
nished? That is the question which thoughtful 
men, busy men, men in all the vocations of life are 


pronounces the story about the demoniac of Gadara a fabrica¬ 
tion. He says flatly that no such thing ever happened, and 
laughs it out of court. 

*The argument from miracles in proof of the divinity of 
Christ is no less strong nor less needed, now that other evidence 
is demanded. Christ did wonderful works that they might bear 
testimony to his divinity. He met those on their own ground 
who charged him with blasphemy because he claimed the right 
to forgive sins. “That ye may know that the Son of man hath 
power on earth to forgive sins, (he said unto the sick of the pal¬ 
sy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way 
into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, 
and went forth before them all.” The argument is this: “ One 
who can, unaided, work a miracle is God. God only has the 
right to forgive sins. I furnish the evidence of mv divinity by 
working a miracle before your eyes. I cure this man. There¬ 
fore I am God.” When the man “went forth before them all ” 
it is added significantly: “They were all amazed, and glorified 
God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.” The proof of 
Christ’s divinity was complete. That evidence has lost none of 
its force, but more is required. 



THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 51 

asking, who have not the time to enter into an ex¬ 
haustive investigation of the facts. We believe 
that the Church will have no difficulty in furnishing 
a full and satisfactory answer. Indeed, the evi¬ 
dence is so voluminous that to an impartial inquir¬ 
er after truth the proof is overwhelming. 

The great doctines of the Christian system cen¬ 
ter in Christ. Their full meaning is brought out 
only as they are related to him. They constitute 
the basis and justify the existence of the whole re¬ 
demptive scheme. If the doctrine which is funda¬ 
mental to all the doctrines of Christianity—the 
divinity of Christ—be not well established, faith 
in any doctrine has no certain foundation on which 
to rest. Therefore in a treatise of this sort it is 
well to illustrate the divinity of Christ until, if pos¬ 
sible, all doubt shall be removed. In addition to 
the arguments from miracles and prophecy which 
are too familiar to need more than a bare refer¬ 
ence to them here, I offer this to meet the present 
demand for proof of Christ’s divinity: Here is a 
being, to all appearances a man, who announces 
to the world that he is a King, at the head of an 
empire that, he affirms, will cover the whole earth 
and finally subdue all other kingdoms under its 
dominion. He comes without an army, without 
money, without earthly support. He does not 


52 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

court the favor of the great, he does not seek to 
win the support of the powerful. He cuts square¬ 
ly across the current opinions of his time on all 
moral and social questions. He announces to the 
few simple men whom he had drawn to him that 
not self-seeking, but self-denial; not love of the 
world, but love of him; not the sword, but preach¬ 
ing of what he called his gospel were the means 
by which his kingdom would be established. It 
is a startling announcement. His method is abso¬ 
lutely unique. It is the method of a lunatic or of 
a being more than man . The history of the Church, 
as it has conquered and is conquering the king¬ 
doms of this world, demonstrates that it was and 
is the method of a God. 

The great Napoleon in his exile home was in 
the habit of discussing before his companions the 
great men of the world and comparing himself 
with them. On one occasion he turned to Count 
Montholon, it is said, with this inquiry: “ Can you 
tell me who Jesus Christ was?” The question 
was declined, and Napoleon proceeded: “Well, 
then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charle¬ 
magne, and myself have founded great empires, 
but upon what did these creations of our genius 
depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded his 
empire upon love, and to this very day millions 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 53 

would die for him. I think I understand some¬ 
thing of human nature; and I tell you all these 
were men, and I am a man. None else is like 
him. Jesus Christ was more than a man. I have 
inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic de¬ 
votion that they would have died for me, but to do 
this it was necessary that I should be visibly pres¬ 
ent with the electric influence of my looks, of my 
words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke 
to them I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in 
their hearts. Christ alone has succeeded in so 
raising the mind of man toward the Unseen that 
it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and 
space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred 
years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is be¬ 
yond all others difficult to satisfy: he asks for that 
which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the 
hands of his friends, or a father of his children, 
or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. 
He asks for the human heart. He will have it en¬ 
tirely to himself. He demands it unconditionally, 
and forthwith his demand is granted. Wonderful! 
In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, 
with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annex¬ 
ation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely 
believe in him experience the remarkable supernat¬ 
ural love toward him. This phenomenon is un- 


54 THE mission of the church. 

accountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of 
man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroy¬ 
er, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; 
time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a 
limit to its range. This it is which strikes me most; 
I have often thought of it. This it is which proves 
to me quite convincingly the divinity of Jesus 
Christ.” * The position of the Church in the world 
to-day is the standing miracle in proof of the divin¬ 
ity of Christ. 

I was riding one day on the cars with Bishop 
Haygood a short time before his 44 The Man of 
Galilee” was published. He gave me a synopsis 
of several chapters in that book, among them the 
one which contains the argument from Christ’s 
method. When he had finished I asked him what 
he thought of this particular argument in proof of 
Christ’s divinity. His reply was: 44 It is impreg¬ 
nable.” For my present purpose that argument is 
sufficient from that side of the question. If the in¬ 
quirer is not satisfied, he will have to go elsewhere 
for light. 

Whatever Christ stands for as he is related to 
our world the Church must bear testimony to, or it 
is an incompetent or a faithless witness. There are 

*1 have taken this extract from Canon Liddon’s Lectures 
on “ The Divinity of Christ,” page 150 . 



THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS . 55 

certain great facts which belong to human experi¬ 
ence that are closely related to the redemptive 
work of Christ whose existence must be recog¬ 
nized or the atonement will lose much of its mean¬ 
ing for our race. The strength and virtue of a 
remedy are measured by the virulence of the 
malady which it cures. If Christ is an almighty 
Saviour, it is because the enemy whose power he 
overcomes is little less than almighty. If he is a 
wonderfully glorious physician, it is because the 
disease of sin is fearfully malignant and appalling 
in its work, dark, dominant, damning. Christ 
is the revealer of sin; and as much as anything 
else the Church of to-day is called on to empha¬ 
size the existence, the strength, and the turpitude 
of sin. Nothing is gained by underrating the na¬ 
ture, the power, and the effects of sin. To dis¬ 
count or disregard the strength of an enemy is to 
invite disaster and make defeat certain. A view 
of what sin is and what it has done for the whole 
human race is obtained by considering the mean¬ 
ing of the incarnation of the Son of God, his life 

o 

of poverty and suffering and his tragic death, to¬ 
gether with the scenes of the crucifixion. It -is 
true that such a view has no place in the Socinian 
theology of the past or the Unitarianism of the 
present day. If there is no such thing as inherited 


56 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

depravity, and sin is nothing but an indiscretion; if 
decent behavior and genteel observance of the 
moral law are the sum of righteousness, the warp 
and woof of moral character, I fail to see wherein 
Christ is much of a Saviour, or where, indeed, 
was the necessity of his death at all. Every such 
view of sin not only belittles the atonement, but it 
at once contradicts human experience and the 
plain teaching of the word of God. Between such 
false views of sin and Paul’s wonderful picture of 
Christ there is no agreement: “ Let this mind be 
in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being 
in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be 
equal with God: but made himself of no reputa¬ 
tion, and took upon him the form of a servant, and 
was made in the likeness of men: and being 
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
and became obedient unto death, even the death 
of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly 
exalted him, and given him a name which is above 
every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in 
earth, and things under the earth; and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to 
the glory of God the Father.’’ (Phil. vii. 5—n.) 
Why should Christ have veiled his divinity? Why 
should he have voluntarily left the glories and 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 57 

companionship of heaven for the experience of 
earth? Why should he have “made himself of 
no reputation/’ and become “ obedient unto 
death,” the ignominious death of the cross, if sin 
is nothing but a human foible or a youthful indis¬ 
cretion? Do the drops of bloody sweat mean 
nothing? Does the prayer of Gesthemane, “ If 
it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” mean 
nothing? Must he “tread the wine press” alone 
for naught? Is there no meaning in the cry of ut¬ 
ter desolation extorted from his lips on the cross: 
“ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” 
Do the rending rocks, the darkened heavens, and 
the parting veil mean nothing? Nothing, or next 
to nothing if sin has not poisoned the fountain of 
human life, if it has not, with a fearful wrench, 
torn mankind away from loyalty to the truth and 
allegiance to God, if it has not filled this world 
with woe and misery and raised a cry of anguish 
in every home in this land. The mission of the 
Church is to proclaim to the w'orld that sin is such 
a real, such a malignant thing that all the woe and 
wickedness and hate and crime and murder and 
rape and robbery and all iniquity ow r es its exist¬ 
ence and its power to hurt men directly to this as 
its all-potent cause. The mission of the Church 
is to tell men that to touch sin is to be defiled, to 


5 $ THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

associate with it is to be controlled by it, and that 
to commit sin is to die. I repeat, if this tremen¬ 
dous, universal fact of sin is not what the word of 
God and human experience affirm it to be the in¬ 
incarnation of Christ is without explanation, and 
his death has neither meaning nor power. In wit¬ 
nessing for Christ the Church at the same time 
bears testimony to the existence and fearful work 
of sin. 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST’S WITNESS (CONTINUED). 
T a great meeting in Exeter Hall, London, in 



J&l May, 1887, Sir Monier Williams, himself a 
student of the so-called religions of the East for 
forty years, spoke the following words: 

44 In my youth I had been accustomed to hear all 
non-Christian religions described as 4 inventions 
of the devil.’ And when I began investigating 
Hindooism and Buddhism some well-meaning 
Christian friends expressed their surprise that I 
should waste my time by grubbing in the dirty 
gutters of heathendom. As I prosecuted my re¬ 
searches into these non-Christian systems I began 
to foster a fancy that they had been unjustly treat¬ 
ed. I began to observe and trace out curious co¬ 
incidences and comparisons with our own Sacred 
Book of the East. I began, in short, to be a be¬ 
liever in what is called the evolution and growth 
of religious thought. 4 These imperfect sys¬ 
tems,’ said I to myself, 4 are clearly steps in the 
development of man’s religious instincts and as¬ 
pirations. They are interesting efforts of the 
mind struggling upward toward Christianity. 


( 59 ) 


6o 


THE MISSION OF T1IE CHURCH. 


Nay, it is probable they were all intended to lead 
up to the one true religion, and that Christianity 
is merely the climax, the completion of them all. 

“Now there is unquestionably a delightful fasci¬ 
nation about such a theory, and, what is more, 
there are elements of truth in it. But I am glad 
of stating publicly that I am persuaded I was mis¬ 
led by its attractions, and that its main idea is 
quite erroneous. Now while we must not forget 
that our Bible tells us that God has not left him¬ 
self without witnesses, and that in every nation he 
that feareth God and worketh righteousness is ac¬ 
cepted of him, yet, I contend, notwithstanding, 
that a limp, fleshy, jelly fish tolerance (such as the 
so-called religions of the East teach) is utterly in¬ 
compatible with the nerve, fiber, and backbone 
that ought to characterize a manly Christian. 
Take that sacred book of ours, handle reverently 
the whole volume; search it through and through 
from the first chapter to the last, and mark well 
the spirit that pervades the whole. You will find 
no limpness, no flabbiness about its utterances. 
Even skeptics, who dispute its divinity, are ready 
to admit that it is a thoroughly manly book. Vig¬ 
or and manhood breathe in every page. It is 
downright and straightforward, bold and fearless, 
rigid and uncompromising. It tells you and me 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 61 

to be either hot or cold. If God be God, serve 
him. If Baal be God, serve him. Only one 
name is given among men whereby we may be 
saved. ‘What! ’ says the enthusiastic student of 
the science of religion, 4 do you mean to sweep 
aw*ay as so much worthless waste paper all these 
thirty stately volumes of Sacred Books of the 
East just published by the University of Oxford?’ 
No, not all. But we warn him that there can be 
no greater mistake than to force these non-Chris¬ 
tian Bibles into conformity with some scientific 
theory of development and then point to the Chris¬ 
tian’s Holy Bible as the crowning product of re¬ 
ligious evolution. So far from this, these non- 
Christian Bibles are all developments in the wrong 
direction. They all begin with some flashes of 
true light and end in darkness. Pile them, if you 
will, on the left side of your study table, but place 
your own Holy Bible on the right side—all by it¬ 
self—all alone, and with a wide gap between. 

“ There are two reasons,” said Sir Monier, 
continuing, “why I venture to contravene the fa¬ 
vorite philosophy of the day. i. Our Bible af¬ 
firms of the Founder of Christianity that He—a 
sinless man—was made sin. 2. That He, a dead 
and buried man, was made life, not merely that he 
is the Giver of life, but that he, the dead and bur- 


62 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

ied man, is Life. Search the Sacred Books of the 
East through and through and tell me, do they af¬ 
firm that Vyasa or Zoroaster or Confucius or Bud¬ 
dha or Mohammed were sinless men, or that, be¬ 
ing dead and buried, they are alive? Bear in 
mind that these two matchless, these two unparal¬ 
leled declarations are closely, are intimately, are 
indissolubly connected with the great central facts 
and doctrines of our religion—the incarnation, the 
crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension of 
Christ. 

“ It requires some courage to appear intolerant 
—to appear unyielding—in these days of flabby 
compromise and milk and water concession; but 
I contend that the two unparalleled declarations 
quoted by me from our Holy Bible make a gulf 
between it and the so-called Sacred Books of the 
East which sever the one from the other utterly, 
hopelessly, and forever—not a mere rift which 
may be easily closed up, not a mere rift across 
which the Christian and the non-Christian may 
shake hands and interchange similar ideas with 
regard to essential truths, but a veritable gulf 
which cannot be bridged over by any science of 
religious thought. Yes, a bridgeless chasm which 
no theory of evolution can ever span. 

“ Go forth, then, ye missionaries, in your Mas- 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS . 63 

ter’s name. Let it be made absolutely clear that 
Christianity cannot, must not be watered down to 
suit the palate of either Hindoo, Buddhist, or Mo¬ 
hammedan, and that whosoever wishes to pass 
from the false religion to the true can never hope 
to do so by the rickety planks of compromise, or 
by the help of faltering hands held out by half- 
and-half Christians. He must leap the gulf in 
faith, and the living Christ will spread his everlast¬ 
ing arms beneath and land him safely on the eter¬ 
nal Rock.” * 

These strong words apply with greater force to 
the relation of a lost world to Christ. The gulf be¬ 
tween them is wider still, and the only way by which 
it can be crossed is by faith in the Son of God. 
Sir Monier Williams had given forty years of ear¬ 
nest study to the so-called Sacred Books of the 
East. The conclusion he reached is they do not 
lead, in a system of evolution, up to the Bible of the 
Christian, but rather, beginning with a little light, 
they end in utter darkness. On the negative side 
of the argument nothing more is needed to make 
the Christian religion the religion for humanity. 
We turn our thoughts for a moment to Christian 
lands to see what they can furnish as a competitor 

* See “ Present Day Tracts, No. 53. The Present Conflict 
with Unbelief.” 



64 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

of or substitute for Christianity. George Eliot, 
who is at least an agnostic, in her trenchant essay 
on “Worldiness and Other Worldliness,” endeav¬ 
ors to prove that the motives which Christianity in¬ 
spires, produced by a fear of punishment or the 
hope of reward in the world to come, are not so 
strong as those that are born within us and by our 
surroundings. “ Men are very little influenced,’’ 
she says, “by the fear of a distant retribution. 
When there is a fierce passion at work, the distant 
future will be little thought of—will be no restraint 
on the passion; and as to acts of goodness, if there 
be not a love of goodness in the heart, the mere 
hope of reward will not produce such acts. In¬ 
herent regard to what is right and true, and genu¬ 
ine sympathy with our fellow-men are far more ef¬ 
ficient motives to goodness than regard to our in¬ 
terests in a coming life.” True enough; but 
where do the “ inherent regard to what is right 
and true, and genuine sympathy with our fellow- 
men,” come from? To what do they owe their 
existence? and what is their inspiration? Uncon¬ 
sciously (and I may add, unintentionally), but 
nevertheless truly does our critic pay a high trib¬ 
ute to the power of Christianity and to its divine 
Author. It is the business of the Church to in¬ 
spire just such motives by preaching the gospel 


THE CHURCH . 4 S CHRIST'S WITNESS. 65 

that saves through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Why is it that in all nations of the world that have 
not yet received the light and blessings of Chris¬ 
tianity no such acts of kindness are found born of 
unselfish motives? They are found in Christian 
lands, and they are the glory and the fruit of the 
Christian system. Let those who reject the Bible 
and the Christ of the Christians account for this 
stupendous fact. 

Like all who scout the Christian religion, our es¬ 
sayist reaches a ridiculous non sequitur in her ef¬ 
fort to account for the evident effects of Christiani¬ 
ty. “In some cases,” she says, “the pathos of 
human life is more moving, has more power over 
our lives when death is conceived of as ending all, 
than when there is the thought of a life to come.” 
If that be true, one of the tenderest periods of 
human history should have been the period of the 
French Revolution, when death was voted “ an 
eternal sleep.” Were the hearts of men then 
specially moved with sympathy for their fellows 
when the streets of Paris ran red with human 
blood; when the guillotine daily hurled hundreds 
of victims into eternity? Does the cannibal feel a 
sense of unusual tenderness and pity for the white 
man whom he is about to slay and eat because he 

knows nothing of a hereafter? There is unutter- 
5 


66 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


able pathos in a mother’s act as she flings her 
baby girl into the waters of the Ganges, but how 
much of it enters her soul as she reflects, “ This is 
the last of my child.” 

Once more: In 1880 there appeared in the New 
York Herald a letter over the signature of Thur- 
low Weed. Mr. Weed was then over eighty years 
of age, and had a large and varied experience as a 
leader in the politics of the country. This letter 
“ contained a comparison between the work of D. 
L. Moody and that of Col. Robert Ingersoll. Mr. 
Moody led men to think of the highest of all sub¬ 
jects; and, while promoting their salvation, stimu¬ 
lated self-control, temperance, beneficence, and 
every other virtue. The line of his progress was 
marked by the reform of drunkards, the union of 
divided families, the consecration of young men’s 
energies to noble objects, the drying up of the 
sources of the world’s misery, and the opening of 
fountains of benediction and prosperity. What 
could Mr. Ingersoll point to to match such work? 
What drunkard had he reformed? What home 
had he made happy? What life had he rescued 
from selfishness and made great and noble? The 
drift of Mr. Weed’s letter was that, tried by its 
fruits, Christianity was infinitely better than any¬ 
thing Mr. Ingersoll could substitute for it. The 


THE CHURCH ylS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 67 

letter was interesting not only as written by one 
who in his old age had undergone a great spiritual 
change, but as presenting the views of a man of 
affairs, a man who knew human nature, and un¬ 
derstood something of the forces by which men's 
lives are molded. It showed that in the view of 
such men it is only the gospel of Christ that is the 
power of God unto salvation, both for the life that 
now is, and for that which is to come." * 

Christianity is the incarnation, the manifestation 
of the Christ. It is his life infilling and energizing 
it that gives it power to raise men from death to 
life and mold them into his own image of purity 
and divine beauty. In bearing testimony, there¬ 
fore, to the benign influence and saving effects of 
Christianity, the hollowness of so-called heathen 
religions, and the heartlessness and hopelessness 
of infidelity on the negative side, and the Christian 
civilization of the world on the positive side, pro¬ 
claim that Christ Jesus the Lord is the only name 
by which men can be saved. The writer already 
quoted relates this incident: “In a town in the 
North of Scotland a benevolent Unitarian minister 
took to preaching on the streets. He spoke of the 
beauty and attraction of goodness to the street 
waifs and harlots who gathered to hear him. One 

* “ Present Day Tracts, No. 7. Christianity and Secularism.” 



68 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

among them, who had not lost all her mother wit, 
spoke out: ‘Your rope is too short to reach the 
like of us/ ” The well is deep, and neither Uni- 
tarianism nor Humanitarianism nor Buddhism has 
anything to draw with. The almighty power of a 
living Christ alone can reach down to the sinner, 
“dead in trespasses and sins,” and touch him 
into life. In witnessing for Christ the Church 
must bear testimony to the lost condition of men, 
and that the “one thing needful” is to be born 
again, that morality is not religion, “ turning over 
a new leaf” is not regeneration, a galvanized 
corpse is not a living body with pulse beat and 
heart throb that tell of the life within. More than 
the “wicked forsaking his ways,” and the “un¬ 
righteous man his thoughts ” is needed. He must 
“return unto the Lord” before he can “have 
mercy on him,” and “to our God” before he 
“will abundantly pardon.” Deep conviction for 
sin because of the enormity of the crime, attend¬ 
ed in some cases by “ loud crying” and tears, tell 
of the fierce battle that is raging in the soul be¬ 
tween the forces of light and darkness. Every 
cry of agony and wail of anguish wrung by the 
“conviction” of the Holy Ghost from the guilty 
soul proclaims, on the one hand, the strength and 
venom of sin, and, on the other, the infinite love 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 69 

and power of the Saviour of men. The modern 
idea of emotionless, tearless conviction and con¬ 
version, with but little perceptible wrenching of 
the soul away from sin and its marriage to holi¬ 
ness reduces the power of the Church to the mini¬ 
mum as a factor for regulating society and saving 
men from sin. More, it minifies the atoning work 
of the Son of God, and robs the incarnate, dying 
Christ of his redeeming power. It turns the stu¬ 
pendous plan of salvation into a ridiculous farce. 
A Church that preaches such an emasculated gos¬ 
pel has nothing whereby to justify its existence. 
I would not magnify the work of sin—that cannot 
be done—but unless the Church preaches fearless¬ 
ly, boldly, persistently that nothing but the blood 
of the crucified Son of God can save men from 
the awful consequences of sin, the Lord of glory 
will sweep such a Church, as a faithless, worth¬ 
less thing, from the face of the earth, and raise up 
another that will be a true witness for him. The 
unchanging yet simple terms upon which salvation 
is to be obtained, the Church is bound to proclaim 
not once, but again and again. It must be the 
constant business of the Church to announce: 
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, 
and he that believeth not shall be damned;” 44 ex¬ 
cept ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” A 


70 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

plain, uncompromising gospel, a robust, manly gos¬ 
pel, a gospel with Christ in the heart of it will save 
men. Any other the Church dare not preach. 

The gulf between the sinner and the Saviour is 
deep and wide—too deep and wide to be bridged 
by temporary remorse for sin. Long nights of 
groans and tears and days of fasting will not span 
it. Such exercises, if worth anything at all, may 
lead up to the one thing that must at last be 
done: surrender to God. “ Vyasa and the other 
founders of Hindooism enjoined severe penances, 
endless lustral washings, incessant purifications, 
infinite repetition of prayers, faithful pilgrimages, 
arduous ritual and sacrificial observances, all with 
one idea of getting rid of sin;” but the sin was 
unpardoned still, the gulf was still unbridged. 
To change the figure: the disease is no cutane¬ 
ous eruption, “the leprosy lies deep within.” 
Human woe will not be alleviated, nor the poison 
of sin eradicated by any supposed virtue of bap¬ 
tismal waters or touch of episcopal hands. The 
Church must cry aloud, “ the whole head is sick, 
and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the 
foot even unto the head there is no soundness in 
it,” and at the same time point the sin-stricken 
soul to the Great Physician who “ healeth all its 
diseases and redeemeth its life from destruction.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHURCH AS CHRIST’S WITNESS (CONCLUDED). 

MfiHERE are two phases of this branch of the 
subject which remain to be considered— 
namely, (i) Christ as the Saviour, and (2) Christ 
as our example. 

The need of a Saviour was great, the outlay for 
human salvation immense, the effort to make the 
scheme a success was and is tremendous. Will 
there be corresponding results? St. Paul, in his 
letter to the Hebrews, calls the end which Christ 
came to accomplish “ so great salvation.” How 
great is this salvation? How far does it reach? 
When does it become, if ever, a fact of conscious¬ 
ness? The angel announced to Joseph that Jesus 
“ should save his people from their sins.” When? 
Without entering into the theological discussion 
which these questions suggest, some things of a 
practical nature it is important to know, because 
they materially affect spiritual life. This much 
may be said, as prefatory to what shall follow: 
“ Where sin abounded, grace did much more 
abound”—that is, whatever may have been the 
work of destruction caused by sin, the grace of 

( 71 ) 


72 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

God is given in sufficient measure to go beyond in 
the work of repair. “ Behold the Lamb of God, 
which taketh away the sin of the world;” “He 
that believeth on me hath everlasting life;” 
“There is therefore now no condemnation to 
them that are in Christ Jesus;” “ They that are 
Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affec¬ 
tions and lusts.” Christians are said to be new 
creatures in Christ Jesus. “ Old things are passed 
away; behold, all things are become new;” “Be¬ 
ing justified freely by his grace through the re¬ 
demption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath 
set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his 
blood, to declare his righteousness for the remis¬ 
sion of sins;” “ The law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
sin and death;” “The Spirit itself beareth wit¬ 
ness with our spirit, that we are the children of 
God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, 
and joint heirs with Christ;” “ Till we all come in 
the unity of the faith, and.of the knowledge of the 
Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the stature of the fullness of Christ;” “ Ye are 
complete in him, which is the head of all princi¬ 
pality and power: in whom also ye are circum¬ 
cised with the circumcision made without hands, 
in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 73 

the circumcision of Christ. . . . And you being 
dead in your sins . . . hath he quickened to¬ 

gether with him, having forgiven you all tres¬ 
passes. ” 

Quotations to the same effect might be multi¬ 
plied indefinitely. These are sufficient for our 
purpose. They teach beyond a doubt the truth 
that the redemption purchased by the blood of 
Christ is a complete redemption from the guilt 
and power of sin. If its guilt is removed, if its 
power is destroyed, its kingdom is overthrown. 
So that, where sin abounded in the soul, destroy¬ 
ing its life and reigning over a kingdom of death, 
grace has come in and expelled the intruder, over¬ 
thrown his empire, and set up in its place a king¬ 
dom of life and peace and holiness. Christ 
promised his disciples that he and the Father 
would dwell with them, and that the Holy Spirit, 
whom he would send, should be in them. It 
would be another illustration of the travailing 
of the mountain and a mouse as the result if, 
after the humiliation of the Son of God, his lone¬ 
ly life among men, the agony of Gethsemane and 
the tragedy of Calvary, the best that can be said 
for the work of redemption is that Christ is only a 
partial Saviour. If some sins remain uncon¬ 
quered, to have sway, to corrupt and poison the 


74 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


soul, what assurance is there that every part of 
man will not be poisoned and ruined by it? Ex¬ 
perience proves that sin, like leaven, spreads rap¬ 
idly throughout the entire system, until every 
tendency, every aspiration of the heart is affect¬ 
ed by its power. That many serious imperfec¬ 
tions belong to the present life—imperfections of 
knowledge and judgment—none will deny. Per¬ 
fect knowledge does not belong to a finite being. 
There is no sin attaching to these. Even be¬ 
ings that have never sinned—angels, for ex¬ 
ample—do not know all things: they are not 
possessed of infallible judgment. So that, when 
we are inquiring as to the extent of the salvation 
which we have through Christ, what are called 
the infirmities of the flesh must be excepted. I 
hasten to say, for fear of giving a seeming in¬ 
dorsement to the indulgence of sinful appetite, 
that even the normal gratification of an appetite 
that results in sin cannot be justified on the 
ground that such appetite is an infirmity of the 
flesh, for the correction or extirpation of 'which 
grace has made no provision. More, such an ap¬ 
petite, judged by its fruit, is itself wicked and its 
indulgence a sin; and for the complete eradica¬ 
tion of such, ample provision has been made. 
Christ “gave himself for us, that he might re- 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 75 


deem us from all iniquity, and purify unto him¬ 
self a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” 
And one of the transcendently glorious ends he 
has set before him is to “present it to himself a 
glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or 
any such thing; but that it should be holy and with¬ 
out blemish.’’ Remember the Church is on the 
stand as a witness for Christ for his life, his char¬ 
acter, his power to save and keep from sin. Ex¬ 
cuses for certain acts, because, forsooth, they are 
infirmities of the flesh, are apologies for sin. If 
the Church, while preaching a gospel of purity 
and separation from sin, fails to enforce her 
teaching by a blameless life, she denies her Lord 
and beguiles men into the commission of sin by 
deceiving them as to what sin is. 

The Church is the only exponent of Christ and 
his doctrine in the world. If it shall correctly 
represent him, it is because its members know what 
he is from a personal experience of his saving 
power. When the rulers of the Jews charged 
Christ with being a sinner the man who was born 
blind, and to whom Christ had given sight, said: 
“ Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one 
thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I 
see.” A witness is one who knows something. 
He can testify no further than he knows. If the 


76 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

Church does not know Christ as a Saviour from 
all sin, when the world asks the question, “ Is 
your Christ able to save from all sin?” the reply 
must be: “As far as I know, he cannot; I have 
no knowledge of that matter.” But the world 
looks to the Church for its knowledge of Christ, 
and it gets it, such as it is. And Christ looks to 
the Church to give to the world knowledge of him¬ 
self, and it gives that knowledge, such as it has. 
The only thing the angel told Joseph that Jesus 
would do was: “He shall save his people from 
their sins.” If he does not do that, his mission to 
our world is a failure. If religion does not save a 
man from loving money while he is making it; if 
it cannot keep out of him a greed for gain and a 
spirit of covetousness while the Lord is blessing 
him in “ basket and store;” if it cannot save him 
from anger and the blow of revenge when he is 
insulted; if it cannot put love in his heart even 
for his enemy—if these things are “ bone of our 
bone and flesh of our flesh,” so thoroughly in- 
wrought into their fiber and texture that to destroy 
them would be to destroy the body itself, the plan 
of redemption is sadly defective at its most vital 
point; it fails when we apply it to the practical ex¬ 
periences of everyday life. In that case, we must 
content ourselves as best we can, the victims of 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS . 77 

passion and lust and appetite, until death shall 
bring us release. In that case we will have to 
look to death, our enemy, to do for us what Christ, 
our almighty Friend, cannot do for us. The 
world will ask: “ What is the difference between 
a man who yields to passion and gets mad because 
he can’t help it, and another man who yields to 
passion and gets mad because he doesn’t want to 
help it?” I would not write thus against such a 
monstrous doctrine if it were not so widely be¬ 
lieved and practiced by many who belong to the 
Churches and profess to be followers of that 
Christ “ who, when he was reviled, reviled not 
again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but 
committed himself to him that judgeth righteous¬ 
ly.” It is dishonoring him “ who was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” It is 
taking the spotless ensign of holiness and drag¬ 
ging it in the filth of sin. It is reducing the work 
of Christ from a glorious deliverance from all sin 
to a perpetual warfare with sin, in which sin is as 
often victor as vanquished. 

What effect does such a notion of Christ as a 
Redeemer have upon spiritual life and the battle 
for the right which the Church is fighting? They 
who teach that the atonement does not provide for 
full redemption from all sin will find themselves 


78 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

hard pressed for an answer to the following ques¬ 
tions: How is it possible for the body of Christ, 
which partakes of his nature and draws its life 
from him, to be impure and tainted with sin when 
he is pure and free from all sin? How is it possi¬ 
ble for Christ, the bridegroom, who has no “ spot, 
or wrinkle, or any such thing,’’ to have for his 
bride a Church that has not washed her gar¬ 
ments and “ made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb? ” If the view I am combating be the cor¬ 
rect view, it is strange that the Church is con¬ 
structed upon a plan which human experience and 
human reason alike pronounce unwise. It amounts 
to this: That while the Church is in the world to 
fight sin and expel it from the world, it has the 
very enemy that it is fighting so thoroughly in¬ 
trenched in its own bosom that there is no power 
that can dislodge it but death. While, therefore, 
the Church is turning her guns upon the enemy 
that is without, she has inside of her own fortifica¬ 
tions a powerful ally of the foe on the outside, 
that can never be overcome, that can never be ex¬ 
pelled. Must the sore made by sin run always? 
Must the wound never be healed? Has Jesus 
power to do more for the body than he can do for 
the soul? While he can make the paralytic to run 
and leap with all the agility of fully-restored 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 79 

strength, must the Church in her spiritual life be 
hindered in her work, weakened in her struggle 
against sin by being linked to a body of death to 
the end of time? This is a question not of the 
limitations and hindrances that belong to physical 
weakness, but of the disabilities which sin fastens 
upon the Church which nothing but death, it is 
affirmed, can remove. The weakness of the 
flesh—not sinful appetites—may become the con¬ 
ditions for the mightiest display of divine power. 
St. Paul said Christ’s strength was made perfect 
in his weakness. “ Most gladly therefore will I 
rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of 
Christ may rest upon me.” They who hold to the 
theory here opposed deplore the fact that they are 
tied on to a body of death which is continually 
bringing them into condemnation. Many, less con¬ 
scientious, holding to the same theory, not only do 
not deplore the fact that they are bound to cer¬ 
tain appetites, but make abundant provision for 
their gratification. Granted that certain appetites 
must be endured till death brings deliverance, the 
next step is to apologize for their indulgence, and 
the next is to defend such indulgence on the 
ground that “there is no harm in it.” It was a 
shrewd lawyer who said to a minister whom he 
heard preaching this monstrous doctrine: “If you 


80 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

are the sinner you represent yourself to be, your 
place is in the penitentiary.” The inevitable re¬ 
sult of such teaching is to put conscience to sleep, 
to break down conviction, and to weaken all the 
powers of the soul for courageous service for the 
right against the wrong. 

There is nothing so powerful as purity. The 
Church stands for purity or it does not truly rep¬ 
resent the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord said: 
“ The kingdon of heaven is like unto leaven which 
a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, 
till the whole was leavened.” How can the 
Church answer to this description if it is not all 
leaven? Did Christ mean that the Church is only 
in part like leaven? He didn’t say so. Did he 
mean that it is for the most part like leaven? He 
didn’t say so. If “this body of death” is to 
cling to the Church to the end, we do not know 
how much of the Church is not leaven. There 
was enough of it to wring from the apostle the 
distressing cry: “O wretched man that I am! 
who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?” Blessed be God, the answer comes 
with a triumphant note: “There is, therefore, 
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ 
Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the 
Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS . 81 

Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and 
death.” The blood of Christ cleanses from all 
sin and sets the Church free, with unshackled 
soul to represent her Lord in the fight against sin. 

If the view herein antagonized be correct, I fail 
to see how Christ can be an example for us in any 
sense. If we are not “ new creatures in Christ 
Jesus,” if the body of sin has not been destroyed, 
but we are to be handicapped with this “ body of 
death” until the struggle ceases in death, how can 
Christ be an example for us to follow when he la¬ 
bored under no such disabilities? But he was 
“ tempted in all points like as we are.” For this 
reason he “knows howto sympathize with us.” 
If this “body of death” is to be our perpetual 
companion, what meaning can texts like the fol¬ 
lowing have for us: “ He that saith he abideth in 
him ought himself also so to walk, even as he 
walked;” “let this mind be in you, which was 
also in Christ Jesus;” “ Christ also suffered for us, 
leaving us an example, that ye should follow his 
steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in 
his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not 
again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but 
committed himself unto him that judgeth right¬ 
eously, who his own self bore our sins in his own 

body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, 
G 


$2 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

should live unto righteousness ?” This last quo¬ 
tation is a crucial text. It clearly teaches two im¬ 
portant truths, both of which we have sought 
to emphasize—namely, first, they who are born 
again are dead to sins (the word is in the plural 
and is universal); secondly, Christ is set forth as 
our example. These words leave no excuse or 
apology for any infraction of the divine law. If 
the Church faithfully represents her Lord before 
the world, it is her duty to teach, both by word 
and example, that when we are reviled to revile in 
turn is wrong; when we suffer injustice to threat¬ 
en revenge is a sin. If when our Lord was led as 
a lamb to the slaughter he opened not his mouth, 
neither must the Church utter one word of impa¬ 
tient accusation. If when his enemies pressed the 
crown of thorns into his head and smote him in 
the face and spat upon him and scourged him to 
his crucifixion no look of anger shot from his eye, 
neither may one who claims to be his follower 
manifest a resentful spirit while suffering wrong at 
the hands of ungodly men. No clearer, truer, 
stronger, more convincing testimony to the divin¬ 
ity of Christ can the Church furnish than by man¬ 
ifesting his spirit in the lives of her members. No 
more powerful magnet to draw men from sin to 
holiness, from the material to the spiritual, than 


THE CHURCH AS CHRIST'S WITNESS. 83 

to set before them lives that have been made pure 
and beautiful and radiant by the sanctifying touch 
of the Holy Ghost. No mightier weapon can the 
Church employ for overthrowing the kingdom of 
Satan and rescuing immortal souls from his power 
than by holding up before the eyes of men spot¬ 
less, blameless lives, made resplendent by the in¬ 
dwelling Christ. As Moses lifted up the serpent 
in the wilderness, even so must the Church of 
God hold up to the world a Christ who can heal 
all maladies and purify from all iniquity, a Christ 
who can keep unto his coming again those who 
have been sanctified by the Spirit. Failure here 
is to deny her Lord and to lead men by her ex¬ 
amble away from salvation. Failure here is to be¬ 
tray Christ in the house of his friends. Failure 
here is to prove recreant to him who gave his life 
for the life of a world, to give men distorted views 
of Christ, and to stand convicted as false witness¬ 
es. Failure here is inexcusable; it is appalling in 
its results; it is without remedy. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 

® HRIST said to his disciples: “Ye are the 
light of the world.” His last command was, 
“ Go, teach all nations.” No effect of sin is 
more potent or appalling than ignorance—spiritu¬ 
al darkness. Nor does any present a more formi¬ 
dable opposition to the progress of the gospel. 
Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. It is 
not strange, therefore, that mankind should be so 
grossly ignorant of all that pertains to the spiritu¬ 
al life. Information here is obtained, knowledge 
is had in a way unknown to the ordinary methods 
of investigation. God is not found out by search¬ 
ing. The heart itself, with its nature and its 
needs, is practically an undiscovered country to 
the human reason. In the nervous language of 
the Bible, “ gross darkness” fittingly portrays the 
moral condition of our race. Nor is the situation 
relieved of its wretchedness by the occasional ex¬ 
amples of semi-Christian morality which stand out 
from the mass of heathendom on the pages of his¬ 
tory. They but intensify the hideous blackness 
of deep depravity that enshrouds all human life. 

If the most inexcusable form of blindness is 
( 84 ) 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 85 

that which results from refusing to see the light, 
the most pitiable is that which is alike ignorant of 
its condition and knows not that there is any bet¬ 
ter. The latter correctly represents the moral 
state of the world under sin and without the gos¬ 
pel. The business of the Church is twofold: 
first, to reveal men unto themselves as depraved 
beings; and secondly, to show them that there is 
promise of a glorious deliverance from this state 
of moral degradation. Only under the light of 
truth can error be revealed. Only in the light of 
holiness can the nature of sin be made to appear. 
Sin never becomes “ exceeding sinful,” until light 
from the cross streams down upon it and shows 
what it is. It is not only possible, it is absolutely 
certain that men will remain in ignorance of the 
nature of sin and of the condition of their own 
moral natures until the veil is drawn aside and the 
light flashes into their souls. Faithfully, fearless¬ 
ly, but lovingly the Church, as the representative 
of Christ, must expound the text-book of the cen¬ 
turies as it sets forth the nature of sin and its 
work in debasing, deforming, and corrupting hu¬ 
man hearts. What a responsible position ! What 
a solemn duty! Practically the Bible will remain 
a sealed book unless the Church unlock its truths. 
The world of mankind, the territory of the human 


86 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


soul will remain engrossed in thick darkness—the 
darkness of eternal night—unless the Church pro¬ 
claim Christ as “ the light that lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world.” There is but one 
foundation on which men can build. There is 
but one force that can regulate human life. 
There is but one power that can mold human 
character. What the Church stands for is not 
one among many agencies that are at work to 
save men from sin and to transform them into the 
likeness of Christ. The Christian religion is not 
preeminently the religion of humanity. It is the 
only religion known to the world. There is no 
other. It represents the only sun in the moral 
heavens. It stands for the only power that 
“ makes for righteousness.” It offers to men the 
only compass by which they may guide their 
barks amid storm and calm over the ocean of life. 
It must tell men what the only right way is and 
urge them to walk in it. It must point out the 
only route that leads from the darkness and death 
of sin to light and life and everlasting blessedness. 
It must guide men to the only Physician who can 
heal all the sicknesses of a sin-cursed world. 
This the Church must do or prove faithless to him 
whom she is commissioned to hold up as the Light 
of the nations. 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 87 

A man into whose soul the light has shined asks: 
“ How is this end to be reached ? How is sin to be 
eradicated, and a character pure, strong, Christ- 
like to be built up ? ” A general answer of this sort 
might be given: By taking Christ as commander, 
teacher, and example in all things. Men live by 
every word that proceedeth from the mouth of 
God. Every word is a command, an exhortation, 
a message of love, a warning, or a revelation of 
himself. All are food on which souls feed and 
with which characters are builded. This must be 
so, or God says something to men that has no 
meaning in it or does not affect them. Such a 
thought is inconceivable. “ The words that I 
speak unto you,” says the Master, “ they are spir¬ 
it, and they are life.” They are the infallible rule 
for right living. Our Lord has told us in plain 
words, whose meaning we cannot fail to under¬ 
stand, what is the method men must employ to at¬ 
tain to the fullness of stature in the divine life. I 
say “ must employ.” He leaves no alternative. 
All other methods end in failure. “ If any man 
will come after me, let him deny himself;” “ who¬ 
soever will save his life shall lose it.” If one 
would be perfect, he must give away all his posses¬ 
sions. How sharply does the teaching of Christ 
contrast with the teaching of the world! He says, 


88 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

“ Deny yourselves, and splendid character and sal¬ 
vation and eternal life and immortal riches will 
be yours;” it says, “To gratify self is the only way 
to be respected and rich and happy.” He says, 
“Give, and it shall be given unto you;” it says, 
“ Get all you can, and keep all you get.” He says, 
“ Fling away your life, and you shall save it;” it 
says, “ The only way to save your life is by holding 
on to it.” The world says, “A man’s life consist¬ 
ed in the abundance of the things which he possess¬ 
ed;” James says, “ Hath not God chosen the 
poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the 
kingdom which he hath promised to them that 
love him ? ” 

The spirit of this age is intensely materialistic. 
The seen, in its power to make and develop char- 
aracter, is magnified and praised and invested 
with divine attributes. It discounts the spiritual, 
the reality of unseen things. The spiritual life 
is either nothing but a sort of refined materialism, 
or it is held to be a manifestation of the emotion¬ 
al nature. Conscience is no longer the voice of 
God in the soul, whose warnings must be heeded 
and whose dictates must be obeyed. Hence it 
has come to pass that men’s lives and characters 
are regulated by the sentiment that controls in the 
community. The pagan maxim, “When you are 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 89 

in Rome do as Rome does,” is the rule in private 
and social life. The religious conscience is flout¬ 
ed as a thing of the past. The restraints which 
religion imposes are shackles that are too galling 
to be borne. Individual character is the resultant 
of social custom and personal desire. 

Into the midst of this worldliness and reckless 
disregard of God’s authority Christ commands his 
Church to hurl the Ten Commandments with their 
binding force upon conscience and conduct. He 
tells the Church to unfurl his blood-stained banner 
to the breezes with “ self-denial,” “ heart puri¬ 
ty,” and “ death to the world ” written on its 
folds. He plants his cross in front of every one 
and says: “ You must be nailed by my side and 
die to self and sin.” He who walks this way will 
reach the goal of fully developed Christian char¬ 
acter in the end, but along the route he w T ill en¬ 
counter (because it is the world’s way) the jeers 
and taunts, and excite the pity of men who are liv¬ 
ing for what they see. To be accounted a fool 
for Christ is to give exhibition of true wisdom. 
Not self-gratification, but self-denial is the training 
school in which stalwart characters are grown. 
Living after the flesh is death; living after the 
spirit brings life. Only invisible things are eter¬ 
nal. Christ in the heart is the only ground for 


9 ° 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


right character, Christ in the life is the only rule 
for right living. 

The preceding discussion brings us to the apr 
plication of the principles herein set forth. One 
of the most frequent remarks we hear is the dis¬ 
tinction between secular and religious things. Is 
there such distinction? Is there any business that 
may be called secular as distinguished from re,- 
ligious? Because men would have it that way 
does not make it so. Men are religious beings— 
that is, they have religious natures—which is the 
same as saying that they are the property of the 
Lord and are accountable to him for their lives on 
earth. This responsibility to God extends to 
every thought and word and deed. Business has 
no character in itself. It is in fact nothing at all 
separated from men. There would be no whisky 
made or sold if men did not make or sell it. 
There would be no politics if men did not organ¬ 
ize themselves into parties. Wherever a man goes 
he carries his religious nature with him. He can 
never get beyond his responsibility to God. The 
Church, speaking for Christ, comes to men every¬ 
where and says to them: “You can’t divest your¬ 
selves of your moral character; you can’t get 
away from your relation to God.” Wherever the 
demands of religion clash with the laws of trade 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 91 

or the cravings of self the Church holds up Christ 
and his teachings as final authority, and demands 
that religious principles shall control. If the rules 
of business which men have established do not 
harmonize with the spirit of righteousness, with 
the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, the 
rules of business are wrong. The Church does 
not undertake to settle the dispute between pro¬ 
tectionists and free traders; but it does affirm that 
if either protection or free trade tresspass upon 
the rights of men, if it enriches the rich by im¬ 
poverishing the poor, if it strengthens the strong 
by weakening the weak, if it takes bread from the 
mouths of the hungry and clothes from the bodies 
of the needy—such a policy is opposed to the 
principles of righteousness and, if persisted in, will 
call down upon those who engage in it the curse 
of the God of the poor. The Church teaches 
that men cannot live to themselves or for them¬ 
selves and retain the favor of God or develop a 
Christian character; that men cannot sell goods 
or raise cotton or practice medicine or keep 
books or teach school by any other rule than the 
“ law of the Lord.” If these propositions are cor¬ 
rect, prayer is a necessity—prayer by all and in 
every business. No life can be lived without 
prayer; no business can be run without prayer. 


92 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

The man who undertakes to run his business 
without prayer has no use for God in his business, 
or God has no use for his business. In either 
case his business will be a failure. No whisky 
seller would dare to ask God to help him in his 
hellish traffic. That fixes its character as an un¬ 
righteous business. No gambler would ever think 
of asking the Spirit to help him to win his neigh¬ 
bor’s money. That stamps it as wrong. 

Much has been said and written about the 
Church and politics and the union of Church and 
State. Governments are a necessity. Society 
must be organized for the protection of life and 
property, the preservation of the liberties, and for 
the promotion of the happiness of the people. 
Men will differ as to what is the best form of gov¬ 
ernment ; they will have divergent opinions as to 
what is the wisest policy for promoting the inter¬ 
ests of the people. This gives rise to politics and 
political parties. Any theory of government for 
organizing and running it that does not recognize 
the great principles of morality as its foundation 
is radically wrong. Its constitution may represent 
the most astute political economy, its statutes may 
be the product of the wisest statesmanship, the 
whole may be indorsed and supported by the sen¬ 
timent of an interested people; but if the Author 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 93 

of all government be not recognized as supreme 
Director, sooner or later such a government must 
fall with a crash that will startle the nations. It 
is the duty and prerogative of the Church, divine¬ 
ly bestowed, to speak with authority to all who 
make politics a business: “This is God’s coun¬ 
try; the law is his, the streams are his, the gold 
and silver are his, the cattle upon the hills are his, 
the people are his, and you are his.” Who organ¬ 
ize governments? Men. Who make laws? Men. 
Who formulate policies to run governments? 
Men. And who are men? Immortal beings en¬ 
dowed with religious natures that relate them re¬ 
sponsibly to God in their thoughts and words and 
deeds. A man can no more leave behind him his 
religious nature—his responsibility to God—when 
he enters politics, than he can leave his lungs. It 
is as much a part of him as his eyes and ears and 
feet; more even than these, for he can have nei¬ 
ther eyes, ears, nor feet, and still be himself. But 
divest him of his religious nature, and he is no 
more than a brute. The Church has the right to 
teach religion, obligation to God, to men engaged 
in politics. It has the right to tell the citizen as 
he marches to the poles to deposit his ballot: 
“You have no right to vote with God and your 
conscience left out.” A vote that does not stand 


94 THE mission of the church. 

for morality and the Sermon on the Mount is an 
unrighteous vote. It is the duty of the Church to 
hold up before the eyes of every man who seeks 
political preferment the word of eternal truth, 
which demands self-denial and unselfishness of all. 
Personal considerations can have no more place 
in politics than in the pulpit. The preacher is no 
more bound to be a religious, God-serving man 
always than the politician. There is as much 
need for a well-instructed, regnant conscience in 
making laws as there is in preaching the gospel. 

It has come to pass that few men enter politics 
or seek office for any other than selfish consider¬ 
ations. Eliminate this factor, and nine-tenths of 
the offices would go begging. Political parties 
frame their platforms, opposing candidates fight 
their campaigns through, and men vote for their 
favorite as if there was but one kind of good that 
can come to a people—namely, material prosperity. 
If the other man is elected, a financial crash will 
come, disaster will overtake the people. Who asks 
or thinks: ‘ * How will the triumph of the other party 
affect the morals of the people ? What effect will 
it have upon the great principles of righteousness 
which are the bulwarks of all good government? 
Will men be led to fear God and have higher re¬ 
spect for his laws? Will aid and comfort be given 


THE CHURCH AS TEACHER. 


95 


thereby to the cause of Christ, and to the advance¬ 
ment of his kingdom in the earth ? ’ ’ Let a man be 
so bold as to propound these and like questions to 
politicians and their backers, and see what the 
effect would be. If they had the faintest suspicion 
that those who ask them are really not insane, the 
reply would come quick and fierce: “ Those mat¬ 
ters have no place in politics. Religion is one 
thing; politics is another thing.” And if these 
people with consciences still insist that men must 
carry their consciences into politics, they must 
be as religious there as anywhere else, the 
cry would come back in tones that tell of its 
birthplace: “Scourge the preachers back into 
their pulpits. Tell those Church people they are 
intruders here with their fanatical notions. Let 
them attend to their business, and we will attend to 
ours.” Nevertheless, the Church insists, in behalf 
of humanity, in behalf of the highest and holiest 
interests of our race, and in obedience to the com¬ 
mands of her Lord, that private character and 
personal responsibility cannot be divorced from 
public position. When God sent a drought upon 
the land of Samaria, Ahab, the king, charged Eli¬ 
jah with troubling Israel. The old prophet said: 

I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy fa¬ 
ther’s house, in that ye have forsaken the com- 


9 6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

mandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed 
Baalim.’’ The only trouble the preachers create 
is in disturbing the guilty consciences of men who 
seek office for personal gain, regardless of the 
laws of a righteous God. 

A few years ago it was seriously proposed by a 
blatant skeptic that the daily custom of opening 
with prayer the sessions of the Legislature in one 
of our States should be abolished. The con¬ 
science of that body had not grown sufficiently 
callous to have not even a formal recognition of 
a Supreme Being, and some sort of necessity for 
divine help. I am no advocate for a union be¬ 
tween the Church and the State. That would 
give color to the claim already setup by some that 
the two stand on a level of dignity and impor¬ 
tance, which is not true. The place of the 
Church in the State is that of the needle that 
points to the magnetic pole. There is no other 
unchanging pole, there is no other needle to point 
to it. There is no other fountain of wisdom but 
the word of God. There is no other Sun of 
Righteousness but his Son. There is no other 
divinely commissioned herald of the truth and 
representative of Christ in the world but the 
Church. The Church is the light of men, the 
light of governments, “ the light of the world.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE CHURCH AS SAVIOR. 

TfF the human eye,” says Dr. Blackie, “is won- 
*• derfully adapted to the purpose of vision; if 
the backbone, with its remarkable combination of 
properties—firm as a pillar, flexible as a chain, 
light in point of weight and graceful in form—is a 
triumph of skillful adaptation; if the family con¬ 
stitution is an unrivaled contrivance for securing 
unity, affection, and mutual help, and kindred vir¬ 
tues—we may be sure that any scheme devised by 
God for promoting the spiritual and eternal wel¬ 
fare of men will exhibit remarkable features of 
adaptation to its purpose.” If there is any differ¬ 
ence, where the need is greatest we would expect 
to find the adaptation most perfect. In this case 
the proposed remedy must “purify and regulate 
all the springs of activity; it must sanctify and 
brighten all the lawful pursuits of life; it must 
sweeten the relations of man to his fellow-men;” 
it must build up the waste places which sin has 
made desolate; it must span the stormy sky of the 
soul with the rainbow of promise and hope; it 

must lift the horizon of human vision which comes 
7 ( 97 ) 


98 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

down at the grave until to the eye of faith the 
mountains and valleys of the eternal world appear 
clothed in perennial freshness and beauty; it must 
pluck the sting out of death and rob the grave of 
its victory; “it may not all at once, even in a 
metaphorical sense, cause the wolf to dwell with 
the lamb, but it must create movement toward that 
consummation, toward that restored golden age 
when they shall not hurt nor destroy in all God’s 
holy mountain.” 

Conceding that such an end is desirable above 
all things, that its realization is of the greatest im¬ 
portance, what provision, we may ask, has been 
made for carrying into effect the divine purpose? 
That there is a remedy for every disease of body, 
mind, and soul, and that the plan of salvation is 
perfectly adapted to supply all human needs, has 
been abundantly shown from revelation and the 
history of our race. And if we look closely, we 
shall find further that the scheme set on foot at the 
beginning and fully unfolded in the teachings of 
Christ is the only plan that is perfectly adapted to 
the complete redemption of humanity. The ques¬ 
tion that remains to be considered is, How is the 
remedy to reach the disease ? 

In the previous chapter one phase of this stu¬ 
pendous scheme was discussed. In the present' 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 


99 


chapter it is proposed to take another step in ad¬ 
vance and treat the subject from a different and 
yet closely related point of view. It may be ex¬ 
pressed in the words of Christ: “Ye are the salt 
of the earth.’’ The distinguishing feature of salt 
is its saving, preserving quality. The world of 
mankind needs to be saved. The depravity is 
real; the blindness is real; the suffering is real; 
the death is real; the woe is real; the tendency to 
ultimate and utter corruption is real; the domi¬ 
nance of sin is real; the reign of vice is real; the 
lawlessness of iniquity is real; the alienation from 
God is real; the opposition to holiness is real; 
the supremacy of worldliness is real. These 
things that prey upon human life and happiness 
are not myths; they are existing, active, powerful 
forces, at work for the ruin of mankind and the 
overthrow of Christ’s kingdom in the earth. 
“ Our moral nature is disordered, and one of the 
chief evidences of disorder is the conflict between 
duty and inclination. Conscience and the will are 
not at one. We may form beautiful ideals, but we 
cannot realize them. Desires which are known 
to be poor and mean often prevail in us against 
the voice of conscience and even the protests of 
reason, and often the state of things is worse than 
that of a conflict in which the bad usually gets the 


IOO 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


better of the good. In many, the result is a state 
of helpless captivity. In these cases lusts of the 
body rise to sovereign power, and crush down 
in ignominious bondage every good and whole¬ 
some desire. Men and women are degraded far 
below the level of brutes. In the grip of impe¬ 
rious lusts they are powerless, struggle as they 
may. “Where the outward degradation is not so 
great the triumph of evil is not so conspicuous; 
but that evil reigns is often lamentably apparent, 
even to the persons themselves. Often their lives 
are governed by a selfishness that, regardless of 
others, seeks to secure everything for themselves. 
The will of God, which they know to be the true 
sovereign authority of the world, is little regarded 
except in so far as the ordinary usages of society 
may happen to agree with it. Their lives do not 
conform to any noble standard. And even at the 
very best, there is such a discord between what 
they are inclined to do and what they ought to do 
that their highest achievements in duty are but the 
result of a hard struggle—not the free, spontane¬ 
ous movements of souls delighting in the ways of 
truth and righteousness.” This is a mild picture 
of the real condition of mankind. In many com¬ 
munities the claims of conscience have been so 
often and so long disregarded that, instead of 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 


IOI 


there being a sharp conflict between inclination 
and a sense of duty, the battle has long ago been 
decided in favor of the former, and there is now 
no conflict at all. The darkness of eternal night 
is gathering over the life of the world. The poi¬ 
son of sin has entered into the heart of humanity, 
and its virus has infected the fountain of its being. 
To expel this poison and renovate the moral con¬ 
stitution is the work of the Church. 

Amid this wide-spread moral desolation the heart 
cries out for something higher. It instinctively 
feels that there must be a supreme good some¬ 
where to satisfy its cravings, an infinitely pure 
and holy Being in whom meet the most ardent 
longings and the highest aspirations of the soul. 
There must be somewhere an all-wise One who 
can take it by the hand and lead it up to the high¬ 
est heights of spiritual communion. And experi¬ 
ence shows that the satisfaction which the gospel 
brings is so much sweeter, fuller, and more lasting 
than any other that the soul rests in the conscious 
possession of its treasure, with no thought of ever 
parting with it or that there is any better. To 
every such hungry, longing soul, and to every one 
who knows neither the hunger nor that which can 
satisfy it, the Church is sent on a mission of mer¬ 
cy and salvation. The turbulence of Augustine’s 


102 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


stormy nature was quieted into peace and rest 
when he sat at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in 
his right mind. Luther and Calvin and Knox, 
tossed upon the bosom of the sea of doubt and 
fear, found no comfort nor peace in the empty 
forms of the Romish Church; but when by faith 
they accepted Christ as their Saviour they set¬ 
tled down into the undisturbed repose of a life that 
is hid with Christ in God. The only transform- 
ing power in the world is that which has been 
committed to the Church. It puts the leaven of 
the gospel into the hearts and consciences of men, 
and changes them into the nature of God. This 
is the work which the Church is commissioned by 
her Lord to do in the world. 

Speaking of a demand by some that a certain 
scandalous community in California be sup¬ 
pressed, the Twentieth Century has this to say: 
“ If any government, national or State, or any 
agency of whatever kind, being invoked, puts an 
end to such a state of things, we have no tears to 
shed. At the same time if people want to make 
swine and hounds of themselves, and to practice 
the rites of Bacchus and Venus Impudica daily, 
hourly, as a religion, there is no reason why this 
magazine should go very far out of the way in the 
vain effort to hold them back.” When such 


THE CHURCH AS SAVIOR. 103 

heartless sentiments are found in one of the lead¬ 
ing literary periodicals of the day, it is high time 
for the Church, the advocate and representative 
of purity everywhere, to proclaim to the world— 
to all men—the gospel of Christ, which will not 
allow the slightest infraction of its least demands. 

Method here means much; the attitude of the 
Church toward the world means much. Nor are 
we left in doubt as to the mind of the Master. 
One day news came to Christ that Herod’s wicked 
queen had succeeded in having John the Baptist 
beheaded for reproving her for living in adultery 
with Herod. The record says: “When Jesus 
heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a des¬ 
ert place apart.” His cousin, the man most like 
him of all men, the herald of his coming, the min¬ 
ister who had baptized him, was dead, and now 
he wanted to be alone a little while to weep in 
solitude and to talk to his Father. But he could 
not be long alone. When the people heard that 
he was gone, they followed him—five thousand 
men, beside women and children; and they were 
hungry. In an orderly manner (as Christ always 
did things) he went about feeding this multitude. 
He took five loaves and two fishes which some 
one had, asked a blessing upon them, and pro¬ 
ceeded to divide them among the twelve, with 


104 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

instructions to distribute the broken pieces among 
the people. The whole is religious, at least in the 
mind of Christ. Other lessons are here, but there 
is one which demands our attention. The twelve 
are the Church, the messengers of Christ. Jesus 
did not take the food and scatter it himself among 
the people. He took no part in distributing it. 
When he put it into the hands of his disciples, his 
work was done. No, not done; for as the pieces 
passed from their hands to those of the people 
they were magnified; though unseen, his hand 
still touched every piece, increasing its size until 
not a hungry man, woman, or child was left in 
that vast company. 

Here is a lesson for all time. The Church 
stands midway between Christ and the world. 
With one hand she receives from her Lord the 
bread of life; with the other she hands it out to 
hungry, starving souls. Here is personal contact 
with men in their wickedness as well as personal 
knowledge of their needs. One of the objections 
the Pharisees brought against Christ was that he 
associated with sinners. His reply was complete: 
“ I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners 
to repentance;” “they that be whole need not a 
physician, but they that are sick;” “the Son of 
man is come to seek and to save that which was 


THE CHURCH AS SAVIOR. 105 

lost.” It is the touch of the blood that cleanses 
from sin. It is the fact that Jesus took upon him¬ 
self our nature and dwelt among us, that he was 
tempted in all points like as we are, that gives him 
the power to sympathize with us and to be the 
almighty Saviour that he is. The Church, in¬ 
stead of fulfilling her mission in the earth, in many 
places is doing the very things that paralyze her 
strength and make her efforts to save the masses 
a ridiculous failure. Her costly edifices, with 
their luxurious appointments, elegantly attired 
sons and daughters, worshipers of the god of this 
world, and her stiff, formal services are a procla¬ 
mation to all the world: “None but those who 
move in our circle wanted here.” In many cases, 
possibly in the majority, this is not intended, but 
this is the result, and the unsaved multitudes are 
not there. It is a lamentable fact that church 
buildings are erected for the saints to worship in: 
as if religion began and ended in songs and 
prayers and sermons and the communion of 
saints—all in the house of God. The divine or¬ 
der has been reversed. Religion has come to 
mean “hold the fort” against the forces of dark¬ 
ness, instead of an unceasing aggressive warfare 
upon the enemy. The meat must come to the salt 
if it expects to be cured by it; the world must 


io6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

come to the Church if it wants to be saved by it. 
The utter hollowness of the Church’s claim to be 
a missionary movement is manifested in the fifty 
cents a head which she contributes annually to 
bring the heathen to Christ. Some years ago a 
minister of the Presbyterian Church in a Presby¬ 
terian Synod made a speech of this sort: “We 
remind me of a man who goes fishing. He gets 
his pole and line and hooks and bait, and off he 
goes to the creek to catch fish. He walks along 
the bank until he comes to a cool, shady place, 
baits his hook, drops it into the water, sticks his 
pole under a root, sits down in his chair which he 
brought along for the purpose, and says to the 
fish: ‘Now come along, and I’ll catch you.’ 
Now,” said the preacher, “we, as a Church, 
are doing like that would-be fisherman: instead 
of going to the places where men are—into the 
lanes and alleys of our cities, into the destitute 
sections of our land where, most of all, the people 
are found who need to be saved—we content our¬ 
selves with erecting our churches in towns and 
cities where a little handful of men and women 
meet once or twice a week to worship God. The 
world will never be reached and saved that way.” 
That is not the way to catch fish. To Zaccheus, 
the ostracized Jew, the chief of the publicans, the 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 107 

most heartily hated man of his race, Jesus said: 
44 To-day I must abide at thy house.” The self- 
righteous Church people said: 44 What poor taste! 
he is gone to be guest with a man that is a sin¬ 
ner.” This spirit is the very opposite of that 
which said: “I come not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister;” 44 if any man will be chief among 
you, let him be servant of all;” 44 if any man will 
be my disciple, let him deny himself.” The salt 
saves in its own dissolution. As long as every 
crystal remains perfect no preserving power goes 
forth from it. 

The now famous Dr. Parkhurst, of New York 
City, said in a recent sermon: 44 Christ not only put 
heaven away behind him, but he came into the 
very closest touch that was possible to him with 
the grossest depravity that was on earth. I can 
imagine some of the angels, not in the redemption 
business, loafing along the celestial courts as the 
Son of God laid aside his glory and moved down 
to Bethlehem in Advent, arching their celestial 
brows and expostulating with him and rebuking 
him for venturing into contact with a world over 
which the serpent had so long dragged his scaly 
coils, and suggesting to him to dispatch a second 
or third class angel down to this disgusting and 
sin-reeking world with instructions to send back 


Io8 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

an affidavit of what he found down here. All that 
I mean by that is this: If you want to be a means 
of saving the world, just understand that you can¬ 
not do it at arm’s length.” It is not enough to 
have houses of worship, the gospel preached every 
Sunday, and other services held regularly every 
week. The Master preached oftener under the 
open sky than he did in the temple. His grandest 
sermon was preached on the top of a mountain. 
His was the hand-to-hand method for reaching 
men. If the multitudes were not present, he 
preached to a handful. If there was but one, he 
preached to that one. And it is worthy of remark 
that in the grandeur of his thought, the strength of 
his language, and the importance of the truths he 
spoke, the size of his audience made no difference. 
For the clearest statement of the doctrine of the 
new birth we go at once to his conversation 
with Nicodemus; for a definition of real wor¬ 
ship we listen to his sermon to the woman at the 
well of Sychar; while to the twelve he un¬ 
folds the deepest mysteries of the spiritual life. 
The disciples were to abide in Jerusalem for a 
short time only; “ not many days hence” the en- 
duement of power will be given, and then they are 
to “go into all the world.” Christ said the king¬ 
dom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 109 

44 hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
leavened.” The leaven works its way steadily, 
constantly under the driving force of its own ag¬ 
gressive nature into every particle of the meal un¬ 
til there is no more meal to be leavened. Not the 
command of Christ alone, but the nature of reli¬ 
gion itself impels the Church to go to men with 
the gospel that is to save them. To do otherwise 
is to furnish proof of a backslidden Church. 
Where there is no motion there is no life. An army 
that is afraid to attack the enemy will soon find it¬ 
self at the mercy of the enemy. Of one thing we 
may be sure: the devil is not on the defensive, nor 
is he inert. He 44 walketh about, seeking whom he 
may devour.” Wherever the Church unfurls her 
standard she may expect to find the enemy’s 
raised against her. I cannot state too often nor 
insist too earnestly that if the Church of the Lord 
Jesus Christ does not fight this battle and rescue 
immortal souls there is no power known to this 
world that can or will do it. But this is the divine 
plan ; and if the Church of to-day becomes so weak 
or unconcerned, through pride or wealth or num¬ 
bers or worldliness, that she either cannot or will 
not undertake to save men from sin, there is but 
one thing to expect: God will wipe it from the 
face of the earth and raise up a Church in its 


no 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


place clad in the armor of God and ready to do 
his bidding. The Boston Watchman says: “There 
are whole churches to-day whose unfaith keeps 
them in the wilderness when they might just as 
well be living and working in the promised land. 
The Lord has called them to go forward in some 
new enterprise of religious service, to take some 
bold and valiant stand in their community, for 
honesty, for purity, for temperance, for carrying the 
gospel into the houses and directly to the hearts of 
the unchurched about them. And because that 
call has been declined they find that they have 
missed their day of visitation, the tone of Christian 
life has been lowered, and murmurings at God 
take the place of songs of gladness. At the be¬ 
ginning of the year there will come the command 
to go forward. It will need faith to obey that 
command. It will be risking something, we think, 
to obey it; but years afterward, if we do not obey 
it, we shall look back with keenest sorrow that we 
threw away such opportunities as came to us in 
that command.” 

The Church is bound to hunt out the source of 
the trouble, the seat of the disease, and apply the 
remedy at that point. It is worthy of note that the 
sins which drew forth the most scathing denuncia¬ 
tions from the Master were those of which the 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 


Ill 


leaders of that day were guilty. If they could be 
healed, if their sins could be cured, there would 
be little trouble with the rest. Men who make 
sentiment, molders of opinion, lead the world of 
mankind to Christ or away from him. Unquestion¬ 
ably the cities of the world invite the closest inves¬ 
tigation of the Church into the forces that make 
and corrupt the lives of their inhabitants. Here 
humanity is congregated in a seething mass under 
the best conditions for the cultivation of vice and 
the worst for the promotion of virtue. If the devil 
has a stronghold on earth, it is in our cities. Sin 
in its most refined as well as in its grossest form 
is found here. Lawlessness against all author¬ 
ity, human and divine, social and civil, covert 
and aboveboard, grows and flourishes in the 
midst of conditions that are favorable to the last 
degree in fostering it. It is a fact also which 
many in this Southern country are slow to learn 
that in the cities opinion begins, sentiment is 
created, fashion starts, custom arises, and from 
the cities influence goes into the country. If the 
church in the city gets an organ, the country 
church must have one. If the town church has a 
choir, so must the country church. If people sit 
during prayer in town, the country follows. If the 
town preacher cuts his sermon off at forty minutes, 


I 12 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


the country parson dare not lengthen his out to an 
hour. I am not stating what ought to be, but 
what is. How to reach and save the “ submerged 
tenth ” is the problem that confronts the Church 
in all the large cities of this land. It is now large¬ 
ly a question of self-protection, of existence. To 
neglect the unsaved is to allow the wound to fes¬ 
ter until the whole community is infected. To 
move away from them is to give full rein to vice, 
to turn over vast multitudes of human beings to 
the control of the worst elements of corrupt socie¬ 
ty, as well as to disregard the express command 
of Christ. Not a spirit of love for men—for all 
men of all sorts—but love of self prompted rich 
churches to sell their “ down town ” property and 
move into more congenial quarters. Is this what 
the Church is for? Is she, in this way, fulfilling 
her mission in the earth? Is lhat the way to go 
into the highways and hedges and compel men to 
come into the kingdom? Is there in such conduct 
any of the spirit of self-denial which our Lord 
taught was the essential condition of admittance 
into his kingdom ? 

I am not writing of the absolute necessity of do¬ 
ing this Christly service for the preservation of 
Church life; I am not now speaking of this kind 
of work because the activity which it requires is 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. I1 3 

necessary to increase of strength and vital power, 
but this is the point of view; whole sections of 
our cities are under the control of the most vicious 
influences; children are born in iniquity and 
brought up in an atmosphere that pollutes and 
poisons every fiber of their moral nature. Thefts 
are planned, robberies are concocted, anarchy is 
born; the fires of hell, heated by poverty and 
crime and suffering, burn in the souls of these 
children before they become men and women. 
The lowest appetites of depraved human nature 
find abundant food in such conditions on which to 
feed. Shall the Church gather up her skirts for 
fear that they will be bedraggled in this filth, and 
with careful step pick her way out of this putrid 
mire and confess her inability or her unwilling¬ 
ness to live and work and suffer that these lost 
may be found, that these dead may be raised to 
life ? If the Church cannot save the most degrad¬ 
ed, Christ is not the Son of God and his mission 
to this world is a failure. If the Church will not 
save the most degraded, she has not the spirit of 
him who said: “ All power is given unto me . . . 
go ye therefore . . . and lo, I am with you 

alway.” If the Church is not in the world to save 
it, pray what is it here for? If our Lord’s words, 
“ Ye are the salt of the earth,” do not mean what 
8 


314 THE mission of the church. 

they seem to mean, what lesson do they teach? 
If where sin abounds the grace deposited in the 
Church does not much more abound, what is the 
mission of the Church in the world? More, if the 
world is to be left to itself and sin, what is to be¬ 
come of us? Who and what is to save it if it is to 
be saved at all? Looked at from any standpoint, 
the Church is under bonds to take the gospel and 
carry it to all men. The world cannot be saved 
without the gospel, and the Church will die unless 
it takes the gospel to the world. 

Paul repeats a saying of our Lord to this effect: 
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ’ The 
spirit of the world is opposed to giving. Sin 
makes men selfish. Self-seeking dominates the 
business of the land. Men organize stock compa¬ 
nies to promote personal interests. The building 
up of personal fortune, the accumulation of per¬ 
sonal property, the gratification of selfish ambition, 
the increase of personal influence—these are the 
matters that control men in business, in politics, in 
running for office. Where can you find a man 
who thinks so little of self that he is willing to run 
for office for the sake of the “ dear people ? ” It has 
been so from the entrance of sin into the world. 
Enthroned in the heart, intrenched in the affec¬ 
tions by years of devotion and faithful service, it 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. I15 

inspires the thought, dictates the policy, and gives 
direction to the life. It seeks always for the best 
for itself. When this spirit enters fully (as it will 
if unopposed) into the soul it poisons its fountain 
with its own venom, displaces charity, expels gen¬ 
erosity, and turns what might have been Christlike 
affections into a brood of vipers. There is no 
more unlovely character than that which is 
formed and dominated by a spirit of selfishness. 
It is a tyrant that rules its subjects with a rod of 
iron; it is a serpent that wraps its victims in its 
coils of death; it is a heartless master that keeps 
its slaves in hopeless servitude; it pollutes all it 
touches; it dwarfs all who feel its power; it de¬ 
stroys all who come under its influence; it stands 
in the way of all progress; its hand is at the throat 
of liberality; it is the deadly enemy of Christ and 
his Church; it climbs into places of power; it 
clothes itself in fine linen or filthy rags; its words 
are well seasoned with flattery; with Satanic impu¬ 
dence it crawls into the pulpit; it sings like a 
seraph, prays like a saint, and preaches like an 
Apollos; to serve itself it will open its hand to 
feed the poor or turn a deaf ear to the cry of the 
needy. What a curse to humanity! Where it 
reigns, every noble, Godlike impulse of the soul 
is extinguished. Some months ago I was attend- 


II6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

ing a Sunday school picnic. A large wooden 
swing had been hung up for the children. Eight 
or ten could swing at once. Each group was al¬ 
lowed to swing five minutes. When the time was 
out, there was a scramble for places. Some of 
the little fellows were shrewd enough and wicked 
enough to slip down, pretending to get out, and 
jump up again. I said to a brother sitting by me: 
“ What is the greatest obstacle in the way of the 
Church’s progress?” He was silent a moment, 
and then replied: “ Self.” This witness is true. 
Our Lord said to his disciples: “ If any man will 
come after me, let him deny himself.” Paul says: 
“ I am crucified with Christ.” The self was 
presented to God as a living sacrifice. The essen¬ 
tial condition of discipleship is self-sacrifice— 
that is, discipleship begun and continued through 
to the end. 

One day Jesus was in the house of a Pharisee. 
Pie watched the guests, “ how they chose the chief 
rooms,” and taught them a lesson in unselfishness. 
Said he: “ When thou art bidden of any man to a 
wedding, sit not down in the highest room; . . . 
but sit down in the lowest room, that when he that 
bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go 
up higher.” Then he adds these words: “For 
whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 117 

that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’’ The 
world says the only way to be exalted is by taking 
the highest seat; the only way to be recognized 
and honored is by pushing yourself forward; the 
only way to secure position and build up a name 
for yourself is by looking after number one. This 
worm at the heart of humanity, this poison in its 
blood, this boa around its life the Church is in the 
world to destroy. It is a new doctrine to men 
that it is more blessed to give than to receive; 
that real, lasting happiness is to be gained not by 
selfishly devoting thought and energy to building 
up one’s own fortune, but by clothing the naked, 
feeding the hungry, and visiting the sick. Self¬ 
ishness contracts; religion broadens. Selfishness 
rivets chains upon the soul and shuts it up within 
the narrow limits of its own littleness; religion 
smites off the shackles, unlocks the doors of its 
prison, and gives to it a continent over which to 
roam in fuller freedom and richer liberality. The 
world sees not because it has but one side of life; 
that is the side which has been marred and blurred 
and made hideous with the spirit of selfishness 
produced by the touch of sin. 

The business of the Church is to hold up in 
sharp contrast the other and nobler side of life— 
that true getting consists in giving, that real living 


ilS THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

consists in dying. If it had been possible for the 
Jews to understand the spirit of absolute unselfish¬ 
ness which dwelt in the heart of Jesus, as well as 
its power to mold really great characters, doubt¬ 
less, instead of crucifying him, they would have 
accepted him as their king. As much as anything 
the self-denying spirit which the missionaries man¬ 
ifest wins the respect and love of the heathen. It 
is this most of all which impresses the thinking 
ones among them with the superiority of the Chris¬ 
tian religion. It is, in this respect, wholly unlike 
their religions. A few years ago, at the close of a 
Bible reading in India, an educated Brahmin, not 
a convert, asked permission to say a few words. 
This is the testimony he bore to the usefulness of 
the missionaries: “Behold that mango tree on 
yonder roadside. Its fruit is approaching to ripe¬ 
ness. From the moment the first ripe fruits turn 
their yellow sides to the morning sun until the last 
mango is pelted off, it is assailed with showers of 
sticks and stones by boys and men and every 
passer-by, until it stands bereft of leaves, with 
branches knocked off, bleeding from many a 
broken twig. Does it cease to bear fruit? Does 
it say: ‘ If I am barren, no one will pelt me, and I 
shall live in peace?’ Not at all. The next season 
the budding leaves, the beauteous flowers, the 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. I19 

tender fruit again appear. Again it is pelted and 
broken and wounded, but goes on bearing, and 
children’s children pelt its branches and enjoy its 
fruit. This is a type of these missionaries. What 
do they come to this country for? What tempts 
them to leave their parents, friends, and country 
and come to this, to them, unhealthy climate? Is 
it for gain or for profit that they come ? Some of 
us government clerks in country offices receive 
more salary than they. Is it for an easy life ? See 
how they work, and then tell me. No; they seek, 
like the mango tree, to bear fruit for the benefit 
of others, and this, too, though treated with con¬ 
tumely and abuse from those they are benefit¬ 
ing.’ * Closing, he uttered this sentiment with 
reference to the Bible: “ Of one thing I am con¬ 
vinced: Do what we will, oppose it as we may, it 
is the Christian’s Bible that will, sooner or later, 
work the regeneration of this land.” Did not our 
Lord have this in mind when he said: “And I, if 
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
me?” Was there not in his mind, among other 
things, a conception of the power of self-sacrifice 
to draw men to himself, not to study only and won¬ 
der, but to imitate that act and come under the 
control of its spirit? At any rate, the mightiest 
force for conquering this world and for winning 


120 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


men to life is to hold up before their eyes the most 
marvelous exhibition of unselfish love known to 
history. 

There is no grander work, there is none so no¬ 
ble as that given the Church on earth to do— 
namely, to achieve the largest spiritual develop¬ 
ment possible of individual human character. 
With the light of life streaming into the soul there 
comes all the aspiration and uplifting of the new 
nature. It is the province of the Church to sup¬ 
ply the food on which this new nature is to feed. 
The converted man is introduced into a new 
world, not the Utopian creation of a disordered 
brain, but a real, conscious world, on whose beau¬ 
ties and glories the eye of the soul looks with 
delight and wonder. The forces here are the 
agencies which are adapted to the wants of the 
soul. They are designed to enlarge its life and 
expand its capacities forever. Here God dwells. 
He is seen everywhere. His voice is heard in all 
this land. As the Christian “walks in the light 
as he is in the light, they have fellowship one with 
another.” By a law of our nature we imitate 
those in whose company we often are, if we have 
for them a deepening love and a heightening ad¬ 
miration. So hearts that are in fellowship with 
God are gradually assimilated to him. And thus 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 


12 


the words of the apostle become true: “We all, 
with open face beholding as in a glass the glory 
of the Lord, are changed into the same image 
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the 
Lord.” As Christ led those of his disciples on to 
the mountain’s top that he might be transfigured 
before them, so it is the duty of the Church to 
take those by the hand whose spiritual eyes have 
been opened and lead them into the heights where, 
with enraptured gaze, they may behold the reali¬ 
ties of a world unseen by mortal eye. 

Nor is this all. Times come when the Chris¬ 
tian grows weary, the burden of life weighs down 
upon the spirits, all human associations fail to 
bring comfort, earthly ties are severed, shadows 
gather about the path, the heart becomes lonely 
and longs for companionship. It is not easy to 
keep up the fight against the opposition that comes 
amidst pain and suffering and desolation. At 
such times the Church must take the weary, tired, 
foot-sore pilgrim by the hand and lead him into the 
“green pastures and beside the still waters” of 
divine grace, where, during a period of heavenly 
rest and fellowship, he may gather strength and 
hope for pursuing his journey. With head erect 
and kindling eye, with a light heart and elastic 
step he “runs up the shining way” to meet his 


122 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


God in larger unfolding of himself and of spiritual 
things. This world also becomes to him a new, a 
transformed world. The natural life has a new 
meaning—in fact, till now it had no meaning. To 
live on this earth now is to fulfill a grand mission 
and do a grand work. Removed far beyond the 
region and atmosphere of' selfishness, this is now 
to him God’s world. “ It is not only the work of 
his hands; it is the utterance of his mind and the 
revelation of his heart. Its mountains are sym¬ 
bols of the stability of his love. Its streams rep¬ 
resent the perpetual current of his goodness. The 
sun shows him brightening, warming, fertilizing, 
beautifying all. The silver dawn and the golden 
sunset foreshadow a life in which the bright hope 
and joyousness of youth are united with the tran¬ 
quillity and maturer joys of age. And as nature 
thus becomes full of new beauty and glory, so or¬ 
dinary life is wonderfully enriched and sweetened. 
Daily bread is sweeter when it comes from his 
hands. All the blessings and enjoyments of do¬ 
mestic and social life become better when they 
are no longer rivals to God himself, or regarded 
as the chief good, but when they are received 
from him, in addition to his unspeakable gift, to 
increase the sum of daily enjoyment. The re¬ 
sources of art and learning, the treasures of liter- 


THE CHURCH AS SAVIOR. 123 

ature and science, the amenities of social inter¬ 
course have a new zest and satisfaction when 
crowned with the blessing of God. The thorny 
wilderness is changed into a smiling garden; for 
wisdom’s ‘ways are ways of pleasantness, and all 
her paths are peace.’ ” * 

Nowhere are the contracting, dwarfing effects of 
sin more conspicuous than in the low conceptions 
and the narrow range of thought which prevail 
among heathen nations. Nature, science, philoso¬ 
phy, life are practically sealed books. With the 
light of revelation, these and kindred themes, as 
do no others, elevate, unfold, and expand the 
powers of the mind. God, sin, immortality, man, 
eternity, grace, duty, personal responsibility are 
fitted above all others to develop the intellectual 
faculties. And while the Bible has nothing to do 
directly with revealing the secrets of science and 
philosophy, still with the expansion of thought and 
the elevation of soul which its study brings the 
best conditions are furnished for a thorough in¬ 
vestigation and accurate understanding of these 
high themes. “The Bible, rightly understood,” 
says the able writer already quoted, “ fastens 
those habits of mind which lie at the foundation 

* Dr. Blaikie, on “ The Adaptation of Bible Religion to the 
Needs and Nature of Men.” Present Day Tracts, No. 31. 



124 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

of science and philosophy — namely, a love of 
order and a spirit of investigation. The Bible 
quickens the faculties that apprehend abstract 
truth and the relations of truth, and furnishes 
them with a noble field of exercise.’’ As proof 
we have only to look at the marvelous discoveries 
and inventions of men living in Christian lands. 
The hundreds of millions of heathendom furnish 
no works of art, nor revelations of buried cities 
and civilizations. The records of the rocks and 
the rich treasures of the past which the earth holds 
locked in her bosom lie hid away and unknown to 
the dull brain of the heathen who walks all uncon¬ 
scious above the remains of extinct dynasties. 
Under the touch of Christianity lost cities have 
been recovered, buried monuments have been un¬ 
covered, and the records of kingdoms that have 
been sleeping for forty centuries have been 
brought to light. Even the tablets on which 
kings wrote the histories of their times have been 
discovered. These records, many of which tell 
of events that the Bible deals with, confirm in a 
marvelous way the scripture narrative. Only in 
Christian countries do we find those inventions 
and mechanical appliances that save labor, cheap¬ 
en products, and add immeasurably to the comforts 
and conveniences of life. Substantial progress 


THE CHURCH AS SAVIOR. 125 

toward a higher civilization is seen only in those 
lands where Christianity prevails. Nothing is more 
clearly demonstrated by the records of history 
than this: Wherever the teachings of the Bible 
have been followed in the public institutions and 
private lives of a people the material condition 
has been improved and an increasingly high de¬ 
gree of civilization has been the result. The 
splendors of Rome in the days of her prime have 
been written of with unstinted praise. But in the 
midst of the glitter of her courts and the luxury of 
her palaces there existed in all their hideousness 
and rottenness the worst forms of social pollution 
and moral depravity. When she was arrayed in 
all the trappings of power, and seemed to be rooted 
forever to the seven hills on which she stood, the 
cancer was eating its way to the center of her life. 
The weakening effects of luxury and lasciviousness 
left little strength to resist the fury of Goths and 
Vandals, and she fell an easy prey to their rapacity 
and their power. The political economist, con¬ 
cerned for the perpetuation of the institutions that 
give strength and durability to any nation, must in¬ 
quire into the causes that produce the decay and 
downfall of an empire. Likewise must he study the 
foundations that underlie all solid, stable, progress¬ 
ive governments. Without entering into an elabo- 


126 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


rate discussion of this subject which would lead 
me away from my purpose, it will be sufficient to 
call attention to the facts of history as they have 
been or are being recorded. The English-speak¬ 
ing peoples are the leading nations of the earth. 
In inventions, in the application of the forces of 
nature, in science and art, in philosophy and litera¬ 
ture, in leavening the body politic and the social 
order, in civilization, refinement, and moral cul¬ 
ture, in the highest types of manhood and woman¬ 
hood, the nations that speak the English language 
are in the front. But these nations also are the firm¬ 
est believers in and the most ardent supporters of 
the principles of the Bible. They give evidence of 
more aggressiveness of spirit and manifest greater 
power to save the world from sin and its results than 
any other nations on earth. Here, as we believe, is 
found the truest form of the Church of Christ. A 
religion that has done so much in redeeming gov¬ 
ernments from corruption, in furnishing the foun¬ 
dation principles on which all stable governments 
rest, that has supplied the conditions for unfolding 
and developing the highest faculties of the mind, 
that has made it possible to recover the cities and 
civilizations of ancient times, a religion that has been 
the chief agent in unlocking the storehouses of na¬ 
ture and converting them into instruments for do- 


THE CHURCH AS SA VIOR. 


I2 7 


ing man’s bidding is the greatest blessing that can 
come to the world. Through the Church, and 
through the Church alone, have these good gifts 
come to the world. Does the history of the past 
demonstrate that where Christianity dominates the 
thought of the people there the powers of the 
mind are quickened and enlarged as under no other 
influences ? the duty of the Church is to supply the 
world with the unadulterated teachings of the Bible. 
Is there greater progress in useful inventions, in 
discovery, in civilization, in the elevation of the 
race under Christian influences than anywhere 
else? the Church cannot remain inactive or in¬ 
different when such results are possible only to 
Christianity. Does the Christian religion, even as 
we have it and as its influence is felt and seen, 
give prominence and power and leadership to a 
people? beyond question it is the duty of the 
Church to teach and preach the pure word of 
God, to build up and make strong that kingdom 
which is to subdue all other kingdoms unto itself. 
The salt of the gospel clarifies the mind, cleanses 
the heart, redeems humanity, purifies society, pre¬ 
serves the State, and saves mankind from sin and 
hell. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 

I *F I were asked, “ What is that work the Church 
• has to do which is most important for the welfare 
of our race?” I would unhesitatingly answer, Work 
in the home. It was the habit of our Lord to talk 
about vines and springs and roots and trees and 
hearts and—children. He had something to say 
about leaves and streams and branches and hands, 
but not much. “Make the tree good;” “make 
the spring sweet;” “ make the heart clean,” were 
his words. The man must get back to the child, 
if he hasn’t been properly trained, to get a right 
start. The home gives mold to character, color 
to society, and complexion to government. The 
homes of a people are the doors through which 
we see the characters of a people. When the Fa¬ 
ther of us all wanted a man whom he could trust 
to lead his people and carry out his purpose in 
building up a great nation he chose Abraham, not 
because he was rich or a tribal king, but for a 
reason that men of the world would have a con¬ 
tempt for. Here it is: “Abraham shall surely be¬ 
come a great and mighty nation, and all the na- 
( 128 ) 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME . 


129 

tions of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I 
know him, that he will command his children and 
his household after him.” The connection here 
is unmistakable. The foundation elements of all 
strong character and national prosperity come 
from homes where the fathers command their 
children in righteousness. I emphasize the 
words “in righteousness ’ ’ because of the place 
of the Church in the home which they suggest. 
It is clear that the connection between national 
prosperity and family government is due to the 
religious character of the home. Nowhere is it 
promised or prophesied in the Bible, nor does his¬ 
tory furnish the proof that godlessness in the 
homes of a people is followed by national pros¬ 
perity. 

The foundation of the home is the union of one 
man and one woman in the bonds of matrimony. 
This union is brought about by the natural affini¬ 
ty that exists between the sexes, and not merely 
between the sexes, but between one man and one 
woman. It is the desire to be closely related to 
each other that constitutes the foundation of the 
marriage relation. It would be a low view of mat¬ 
rimony to suppose that in this relation only the 
animal nature is involved. Man is preeminently a 
spiritual being, and where two beings are drawn 
9 


130 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

together with a view to the closest relations that 
can exist between them surely this is not animal 
instinct alone; the higher nature has a controlling 
share in it. The law of affinity which governs 
all nature’s combinations would lead us to expect 
that in a relation which embraces the highest and 
dearest interests of two human beings until death 
dissolves the union man’s entire nature is in¬ 
volved. This view we find confirmed by the Bi¬ 
ble. When God made Adam a wife out of one 
of his ribs, and presented her to him, he said: 
“ Therefore shall a man leave his father and his 
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they 
shall be one flesh.” “What God hath joined to¬ 
gether, let not man put asunder,” said the Mas¬ 
ter. Surely a just conception of a relation that 
binds two beings together not in bonds, but in 
such union that they are one, and that involves 
their highest interests and was inaugurated to pro¬ 
mote this end, is, above all other conceptions of it, 
a religious relation. Hence in the rites and cere¬ 
monies that belong to the celebration of the mar¬ 
riage contract, even when civil magistrates offici¬ 
ate, it is recognized as the “ holy estate of matri¬ 
mony.” It is a civil institution, but without the 
sanctions and safeguards of religion it would be a 
sorry and insecure affair. Unless the people of 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 131 

these United States repudiate with an emphasis 
that cannot be mistaken the loose, worldly, utterly 
sensual views of the marriage contract that are 
held in many places in this country, and invest 
the marriage relation with all the sacredness that 
religion can give it, motherhood will become an 
intolerable burden, children a nuisance, and the 
home a forgotten memory. Eliminate the reli¬ 
gious idea from the marriage relation, and nothing 
remains to hold two people together but mutual 
pleasure and profit. When the relation becomes 
undesirable and unprofitable, separation follows. 

Novel writers have done no little to create false 
ideas of what marriage means. The sickly senti¬ 
mentalism, misnamed love, that pervades their 
stories gives evidence that their heroes and hero¬ 
ines are either incapable of this noblest passion of 
the soul or the thing they call love has never 
touched their spiritual natures. To joke about a 
passion that holds in its grasp the destinies of a 
soul is in harmony with the flippancy and irrever¬ 
ence with which novelists treat the most sacred 
themes. “And if love is such a flashing, dashing, 
evanescent thing as the ordinal story-writer rep¬ 
resents it, it deserves to be ridiculed and impaled 
on the horns of joke and jest. But in the hands 
of Shakespeare or Milton the love of man or worn- 


132 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

an is something to inspire respect and awe;” it 
stands out a pure and noble feeling, and is asso¬ 
ciated with all that is best and brightest in human 
life and aspiration. How could it be otherwise 
than one of the noblest, one of the divinest senti¬ 
ments of the soul when we remember that in its 
exercise and under its welding touch the purposes 
of God are to be carried out in developing the 
highest types of character on earth and fitting hu¬ 
man beings for companionship with himself for¬ 
ever. Unconsciously, it may be, but by the di¬ 
vine intention, men and women seek such a rela¬ 
tion for the cultivation and development of their 
own natures. Each is the complement of the 
other. Female society in this close relation devel¬ 
ops male character and vice versa . The feminine 
gives delicacy and refinement to the masculine, 
while the masculine adds strength and robust¬ 
ness to the feminine. 

This brings us to another branch of the subject. 
The chief design in organizing the family is to fit 
immortal souls for doing the work to which they 
are appointed. From a physiological standpoint 
we cannot understand why a human being should 
be so much longer in reaching maturity than a 
horse. There is not enough difference is the tex¬ 
ture of the flesh or in the construction of the body 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 133 

to account for it. The organs of secretion, respi¬ 
ration, and digestion are very much alike. Why 
this difference? The anatomist is puzzled, the 
physiologist is at his wits’ end. In this, as in many 
other cases, an answer is obtained by looking at 
the matter from the moral side. The tie between 
the mother animal and its offspring, strongest at 
first, gradually weakens until it is no stronger than 
that between any other animals of the same spe¬ 
cies, while between brothers and sisters there is 
no filial tie whatever. With human beings the case 
is reversed. The love of the mother for the child 
strengthens with its growth until the child’s life is 
bound up with hers. Not a sense of duty only, 
but, much more, love for her child prompts the 
mother to watch over and care for it. The help¬ 
lessness and ignorance of the child furnish the 
best conditions for right or wrong training. The 
young animal has nothing to guide it but instinct. 
The young child is provided with guides and 
teachers for long years who, of all others, are 
most interested in the child’s well-being. What 
a charge! How solemn ! What interests in soci¬ 
ety, in the Church, in the State are involved! 
There is nothing more sacred, more dignified, 
more important than the training of an immortal 
being. Whose work is it? 


134 THE MISSION of the church. 

Chiefly the mother’s. If the hand and purpose 
of God are plain anywhere, they are seen in the 
physical constitution, the social nature, and the 
domestic inclinations of woman. She covers her¬ 
self with the veil of modesty. Her shrinking na¬ 
ture shuts itself in from the gaze of men (at least 
this has been the case for six thousand years) be¬ 
hind the curtains and blinds and privacy of the 
home. Here she sits a queen, lifted to her place 
of respect and power by the hand of her Lord. 
While her husband may rule in the lives of the 
children, she holds undisputed sway in their affec¬ 
tions. Brought into daily, hourly contact with 
her children in their young and plastic years, it 
takes all the skill and patience and love of a moth¬ 
er’s heart to bend the twig the way the tree should 
incline; unless, indeed, she has a call to leave the 
quiet of the home and the care of her children for 
the wider ( ?) field of preacher or lecturer. The 
docile husband, meantime must perforce play 
nurse and housekeeper and seamstress and maid 
of all work. As long as woman is what she is the 
home is her place, her widest field of usefulness, 
her pedestal of honor, her throne of power. And 
he who, calling himself husband, does not strive in 
every way possible to him to make this home the 
happiest, the dearest place on earth—a very para- 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 


ns 

dise to her whom he calls wife—is unworthy the 
love of a true woman. He who stays away from 
her longer than stern duty demands, and does not 
return to her side to relieve her when she is suffer- 
ing, to lighten the burdens of housekeeping and 
render such assistance as he can about the home, 
has small appreciation of the blessings his wife 
brought with her when she came into his home. 
Nor is he worthy to enjoy the sweetness and fel¬ 
lowship of the marriage relation until he has 
learned what St. Paul meant when he said, “ Hus¬ 
bands, love your own wives, even as Christ also 
loved the church and gave himself up for it; that he 
might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the wash¬ 
ing of water with the word, that he might present 
the church to himself a glorious church, not hav¬ 
ing spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it 
should be holy and without blemish. Even so 
ought husbands also to love their wives as their 
own bodies. He that loveth his own wife loveth 
himself.’’ 

It is the rule, in discussing the relation of par¬ 
ents to their children, to look at the matter alto¬ 
gether in the light of the duty which the parent 
owes to the child, based on the divine command¬ 
ments which bear upon this question. This view 
must not be discarded, but I prefer to discuss this 


136 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

subject from the standpoint of the child. A boy 
baby is born—the weakest, the most ignorant, the 
most helpless, the most stupid, the most dependent 
animal we know anything about. We would nev¬ 
er attach any worth whatever to this whining, cry¬ 
ing, filthy thing, if we did not also know the worth 
of a man. This child will be a man by and by, 
with all the faculties of body, mind, and soul 
dwarfed or developed as they have received good 
or ill training. Has this child any rights in the 
matter? Is it a matter of indifference whether he 
shall be a good or a bad man; a strong or a weak 
man; a man with high purposes or a man with ig¬ 
noble aims; a real, true, manly man, or a man in 
form only? It is not a matter of indifference 
either to him or to others. Whether he shall be 
the one or the other, his father and mother, most 
of all, will determine. This responsibility rests 
chiefly on them. Do they owe this boy nothing? 
Has he no right to demand at their hands the best 
training they can give him? This boy stands, at 
the age of twenty-one, on the front doorstep, with 
his back to the home that has sheltered him from 
his infancy, and his face toward the big world 
which he is about to enter. In perfect truth 
he can look into the faces of his father and 
mother, as he is about to tell them good-bye, and 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME . 


1 37 


say: “ Father, mother, I am going forth to meet 
the realities of life, to take my place among men, 
amid the good and the bad that are in the world. 
Forces that try men will come upon me; tempta¬ 
tions will assail me; new conditions will be about 
me; the seductive voice of sin will sound in my 
ear. Whether I shall stand or fall depends upon 
how you, as my parents, have regarded your obli¬ 
gations and discharged your duty to me,” Many 
a guilty father and faithless mother might well 
tremble for the fate of their boy as they remember 
how poorly they have prepared him to enter the 
strife where the truest are the bravest and only the 
pure are strong. 

I undertake to say that this boy has rights which 
his father and mother are bound to respect. He 
had no hand in bringing himself into existence. 
For a long stretch of time he is so utterly ignorant 
that he does not know right from wrong. The 
panther’s giossy sides and the faithful dog’s warm, 
soft hair are equally pleasing to his infant touch. 
He receives without question whatever is put into 
his hands. With no thought of danger he thrusts 
his hand into the glowing fire or the spot of sun¬ 
shine as it plays upon the carpet. To him an 
oath and a prayer are alike meaningless—no, not 
meaningless; they are forces that, entering into 


13 s THE mission of the church . 

his soul, help to make him what he shall be: a 
reverent or a blasphemous man. In discussing 
the rights of this baby boy I begin on the lowest 
plane. He has a body. It is a part of him. It 
will have much to do with his work in after life. 
If it be sound and strong and healthy, it will con¬ 
tribute much to the amount and kind of work he 
will do. It will determine very largely the spirit 
that will pervade his life and make him cheerful 
and happy or moody and sad. Making due al¬ 
lowance for whatever defect in physical organism 
he may have inherited, his father and mother are 
responsible for the physical well-being of that 
boy. They have no right to feed him on un¬ 
wholesome food, or to violate the laws of health 
either in depriving him of proper exercise or in 
exposing him to inclement weather. Overwork 
or no work is doing the child a grievous wrong. 
Nor is this an economic question only; it is a mor¬ 
al question as well. Man is a religious being, and 
whatever he is or does has in it the religious ele¬ 
ment. Hence, to give a boy proper physical 
training is religious; not to do it is a sin. 

This boy has a mind. What he will do in the 
world and for the world depends largely upon the 
mental training he has received. Where rests the 
responsibility here? Most of all upon the parents. 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 139 

“ But they are not educated/’ They are not, for 
that reason, incapable of appreciating the advan¬ 
tages of an education. They must know, if they 
will only open their eyes, that educated men rule 
the world to-day. Now and then a man of un¬ 
common talent educates himself in the practical 
affairs of life, and by force of will with persistent 
effort rises to a position of prominence and power. 
Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson are exam¬ 
ples of this sort, but they are the exceptions. 
These men, by close attention to study, got to be 
masters of political science and thoroughly versed 
in matters of government. Their messages to 
Congress are models of strong, terse, lucid En¬ 
glish. But the bulk of mankind, as to their 
mental equipment, are what the home makes 
them. This boy will be a citizen after awhile. 
Citizenship means responsibility. He will have 
the right and it will be his duty to vote. Whether 
he shall vote intelligently or not will depend upon 
whether he understands the issues involved. 
This, in turn, will depend largely upon his educa¬ 
tion, and for this his parents are responsible. 
One reason why the negro’s vote is dreaded by 
the white man who is interested in the good of his 
country is because it stands almost invariably for 
ignorance, to say nothing of the corruption that 


140 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

goes with it. No white man in this country can 
be guiltless before God and man who, for whatev¬ 
er reason, has brought up his boy in such gross 
ignorance that he is incapable of forming an intel¬ 
ligent opinion on the questions of the day. This 
boy will be drawn on a jury. Matters of great in¬ 
terest will come before him. Whether he shall 
inquire into these matters understanding^ will de¬ 
pend upon the fidelity or faithlessness of his par¬ 
ents in giving him proper educational advantages. 
He will be called to sit on juries to try men for 
their lives. It is a reproach to us as a people that 
shrewd lawyers are careful to select the most ig¬ 
norant men to try men charged with murder. It 
is a shame that these lawyers have no trouble in 
getting the kind of men they want. The reason 
is plain. A man who can weigh neither facts nor 
law can be persuaded to give any sort of a verdict 
a sharp lawyer wants or a strong-minded leader 
on the jury may indicate. Several years ago I 
was present at the trial of a man for murder in 
one of the middle counties of Georgia. It was a 
clear case of murder. There was not a mitiga¬ 
ting circumstance. The deed was deliberately 
planned and executed without the show of provo¬ 
cation. As usual in such cases, the jury was com¬ 
posed largely of ignorant men. A famous crimi- 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 141 

nal lawyer was employed for the defense. With 
his matchless eloquence he so wrought upon the 
emotions of those men and bewildered their 
minds that when they retired to make up their 
verdict, as one of their number afterward told me, 
some of them were ready to bring in a verdict 
of “ not guilty.” This boy will be no better fitted 
for service on a jury if his parents bring him up 
in utter disregard of his inalienable rights. 

Most important of all, this boy has a soul. The 
Church comes to this father and mother with the 
word of God in her hand, and with authority de¬ 
mands that the great principles of truth and right¬ 
eousness shall lie at the foundation of this child’s 
character. She says to these parents: “You must 
bring up this boy in the nurture and admonition of 
the Lord. You must feed his soul on the bread of 
life; you must take him by the hand and lead him in 
paths of righteousness; you must train him in the 
school of obedience; you must teach him the great 
doctrines of responsibility and immortality; you 
must tell him that wisdom and strength for his life’s 
work come from above; you must tell him that the 
word of God will be a lamp unto his feet and a 
light unto his path — all this you must emphasize 
with a life of gentleness and purity and blameless¬ 
ness before him.” Words are wings or weights 


14 2 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

to lift the soul heavenward or drag it down toward 
hell. They are forces that make character. 
They put iron into the soul of the boy or they take 
the strength out of him. The conversation of the 
home will be helpful or hurtful to the life and 
character of the boy as religion rules or is relega¬ 
ted to a corner. Atmosphere laden with miasma, 
taken into the lungs, will produce sickness and 
death. The pure air of the mountains, far from 
the poison of the swamps, brings the tinge to the 
cheek, the sparkle to the eye, the laugh to the lip, 
elasticity to the step, and robustness to the body. 
The atmosphere of the home—if such deserves 
the sweet name of home—impregnated with 
impure words, filthy anecdotes, curses and oaths, 
and vile speech—what is there in such a place to 
shield a boy’s moral nature from utter corruption? 
Or suppose there are none of these but an entire 
absence of religion, what chance has that boy to 
have the most important part of him—his moral 
nature—prepared for his life’s work? From such 
a home he goes out into the world with a well-cul¬ 
tivated mind, in a strong, healthy body; but his 
soul has never been fed, his moral nature has been 
wholly neglected, he has not been taught to pray 
or worship God in any way. He may be an intel¬ 
lectual giant, but he is a moral dwarf. As he is 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME . 143 

about to leave the home of his childhood to enter 
the lists against the forces that will seek to ruin 
him, as the father and mother look back through 
all the years and think of this prayerless home, 
this godless atmosphere in which they have 
brought up this dear boy, what assurance have 
they that he will not take up with evil companions 
and find his way speedily into some den of infamy 
and to prison? And as that boy looks out from 
behind the bars into the faces of broken-hearted 
father and mother, with a sense of injured man¬ 
hood he hurls into their teeth bitter reproaches for 
sending him out into the world with no moral man¬ 
hood and no strength of religious character to 
support him against the craftiness of designing 
men. As well expose a six months old child to 
the rigors of an Arctic winter and expect it to live 
as to send such a young man out into the world at 
the age of twenty-one and expect him to resist its 
temptations and not fall a victim to its vices. The 
gallows and the chain gang are the logical results 
of many a father’s and mother’s ungodly lives in 
the presence of their children. In whatever busi¬ 
ness this boy may engage he is not half prepared 
to do his work well if his religious training has 
been neglected. 

In the true sense of the word there can be no 


144 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

home without the Bible. The Bible is of no value 
unless it be a molding force. This it cannot be 
without the presence of religion. Religion means 
worship. Common sense teaches that worship 
must be as regular and constant as eating. Wor¬ 
ship means prayer, family prayer. Practically a 
prayerless home is a home that is powerless for 
making religious character. The old command 
has not been abrogated: “ These words, which I 
command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and 
thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, 
and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine 
house, and when thou walkest by the way, and 
when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” 
(Deut. vi. 6, 7.) 

As the Church is in the home, to be the guide 
in its morals and the regulator of its life, so like¬ 
wise is it set for its protectipn. Nothing is more 
ennobling or degrading than what people read. 
Books and papers were never so plentiful nor so 
cheap as they are now. Men, with the sole pur¬ 
pose of making money, cater to the demands of a 
perverted taste and feed a depraved appetite with 
literature, the only effect of which is to inflame the 
imaginations of the young and make strong the worst 
elements in human nature. These publications, 
many of them vile to the last degree, all of them 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 145 

sensational, by presenting views of life altogether 
unnatural and highly colored with the roseate 
hues of romance, create the desire for adventure 
and lay the foundations of a career of lawlessness 
the end of which can only be disgrace or death. 
A recent writer says that while visiting the State 
prison of Indiana the chaplain of that institution 
informed him that out of one hundred and twenty- 
one prisoners then under his care and who were 
convicted before they came of age, ninety-two at¬ 
tributed their crimes to the fact that their minds were 
corrupted and poisoned by the vile and false papers 
and books that are everywhere floating through 
the land to-day. An appalling case comes from 
New Jersey. A boy sixteen years old was sen¬ 
tence to be hanged. Says the reporter: “ It is a 
painful thought that neither the judge nor any oth¬ 
er discriminating person who attended the trial 
doubted the justice of the sentence, and that no 
good reason can be assigned for interfering with 
the course of the law, as the boy’s whole conduct 
showed him a man in intelligence and crime! He 
had religious advantages superior to many, but 
gave himself up to a literature which stimulated his 
propensity to obtain property dishonestly and taught 
him the manner in which noted criminals com¬ 
mitted crimes of great atrocity, and the means by 
10 


146 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

which they were successful in avoiding detection.’’ 
He only intended to rob a man, but in doing so 
he took his life, and this is the end. A sad case 
came under my own observation recently. A well- 
educated young lady, of good family, was exceed¬ 
ingly fond of novel reading. Her distorted imag¬ 
ination clothed a brute of a man with all the attrac¬ 
tions of a hero. She married him against the 
wishes of her friends. In a few short months she 
died from the blows and kicks of this inhuman 
wretch. This class of literature may not be the 
most prolific cause of evil in our modern civiliza¬ 
tion, but is doing more to corrupt the minds of the 
young than any other one thing. The Christian 
people of this country should organize a crusade 
against this giant enemy that is seeking to enter 
their homes, to defile their purity, to destroy their 
peace, and blast the fair lives of their children. 

To the mothers of America in the home is in¬ 
trusted the future of this country. The men or 
women who shall make or mar its destiny are 
standing at their knees. Are these mothers 
winning them to Christ? Are they teaching 
them lessons of self-restraint and self-denial 
that shall make them strong in the battles of 
life? Are the mothers’ lives “living epistles,” 
from which they learn the beauty of holiness? 


THE CHURCH AND THE HOME. 147 

When Napoleon I. was asked, “ What is the chief 
need of the French Empire? ” he replied, “ Moth¬ 
ers/’ Christian mothers. Who can calculate the 
debt which the world owes to Christian mothers 
“ who have made their homes a center of light at 
which tapers have been lit that have carried celes¬ 
tial radiance into the dark places of the world?’’ 
Had not Monica prayed year after year, though heart 
and flesh well-nigh failed, Augustine the prodigal 
would never have become Augustine the saint. 
Washington’s guide through life was a little book 
of maxims penned by the hand of his mother, and 
when the snows of many winters lay white upon 
her grave the gray-haired commander was still fol¬ 
lowing the guide of his childhood. All the world 
knows what a debt Methodism owes to the mother 
of John Wesley. In a letter to her husband Mrs. 
Wesley describes the individual dealings with the 
souls of her children, and how she became thor¬ 
oughly acquainted with each one’s peculiarities, 
and in the most confidential relations of the home 
made herself their trusted counselor as long as she 
lived. 44 Religion was so wisely intermingled with 
their work and play that it became the keynote of 
their lives. Ruskin, in his autobiography, tells of 
his daily Bible readings with his mother. There 
came a time in later life when his faith failed, and 


148 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

the clouds of unbelief settled over the mind of the 
great writer. His thoughts turned to the early 
lessons received from his mother’s lips, the clouds 
disappeared, and the word of God has become 
again a lamp unto his feet, lighting up his path as 
he is nearing the end of his earthly pilgrimage.” 

This is a far-reaching question. With the 
Church in the home, with its regulating, molding 
hand upon the lives of all who dwell there—which 
means all the men, women, and children of the 
land under its influence—many other questions at 
once settle themselves. The lives of politicians 
already saved and sanctified by its teachings, cor¬ 
ruption among lawmakers would be unknown. 
With religion as a guide in the home, there would 
be no cheating and swindling in buying and sell¬ 
ing, there wouldn’t be a grogshop from Maine to 
California, and drunkenness would disappear from 
the land. Police courts would have no business, 
and constables, sheriffs, and bailiffs would find 
themselves out of a job. Peace, brotherly love, 
and good order, like a welcome guest, would 
abide among us forever. 


CHAPTER XI. 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 

f OLLOWING naturally upon the discussion in 
the previous chapter, and closely related to it, 
is the subject of education. The time was, not 
many centuries ago, when there were no differ¬ 
ences of opinion on this question; for as the duty 
was assumed so the right was conceded to the 
Church to direct the education of the people. It 
is only in modern times that educational institu¬ 
tions separate from the control of the Church 
have been founded by the State. Smith’s “ Bible 
Dictionary” says: “ Previous to the captivity, the 
chief depositories of learning were the schools or 
colleges—called prophetic schools—from which, 
in most cases, proceeded the succession of public 
teachers, who, at various times, endeavored to re¬ 
form the moral and religious conduct of both 
rulers and people.” After the captivity the 
schools of the prophets were superseded by the 
schools attached to the synagogues. For more 
than three thousand years the matter of education 
was in the hands of the Church, and was recog¬ 
nized as one of its normal, because Heaven-ap- 

( 149 ) 


150 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

pointed, functions. From the time of Justin 
Martyr down to about the middle of the four¬ 
teenth century all educational movements were 
practically under the control of churchmen. 
During all these centuries the history of the 
times was written and preserved by churchmen. 
To them we are indebted for the preservation of 
the manuscripts of the Bible and of the earlier Fa¬ 
thers of the Church, as well as for the writings of 
those godly men who were the light of the world 
during the darkest period of its history since the 
days of the apostles. To them the world is in¬ 
debted for whatever of accurate knowledge it has 
of those dark days of anarchy and corruption. 

The Christian idea of education is this: that 
preparatory process by which a man is fitted for 
the best service for God and his race of which he 
is capable. It is that system of training by which 
a man becomes the most efficient factor in work¬ 
ing out the problem of the world's redemption. 
If, as we have undertaken to show, the Church is 
in the world to save it, then whatever the Church 
accentuates, whatever it places in the forefront as 
the most important to this end is the most vital 
thing in the life of humanity. Now the Church 
exalts the spiritual above the mental and physical. 
It makes its cultivation paramount. It does not 


THE CH URCH AND ED UCA TION. I 5 1 

oppose, rather it is the leader in fostering the 
proper education of the mind. It does, however, 
steadily antagonize any system that inculcates sci¬ 
ence and philosophy to the exclusion of ethics and 
theology. It is not affirmed that much of the edu¬ 
cation of the schools is not desirable—in its way 
there is a measure of good in it—but the conten¬ 
tion is that it is imperfect to the extent that the 
moral nature is ignored. The effect of it is to 
warp the whole man. It is fatally defective in its 
relation to the claims of conscience. It fails to 
give any adequate conception of God’s proprieta¬ 
ry right to every faculty and element of man’s 
whole being. Rather, the effect of purely secular 
teaching is to benumb the conscience, to blur the 
spiritual vision, and to weaken if not to sever the 
tie that binds the soul to God. Nor will educa¬ 
tion with the moral faculties left out bring the 
mental powers to their fullest development or 
highest degree of usefulness. But this is just 
what the Master requires: “his own with usury.” 
A man is bound not only to give himself to Christ, 
but to make the most of himself for Christ. This 
he can do only by educating his moral nature. 
Hence Christian education is not only a conces¬ 
sion to the demands of good policy; it is a reli¬ 
gious duty. 


152 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

By another route we reach the same conclusion. 
Secular education is not only not an unmixed good, 
it is almost certain that it is a positive evil. Leav¬ 
ing out of the discussion, for the present, the idea 
of obligation to God, let us take a common sense 
view of the matter. All men, atheistic material¬ 
ists included, admit that man has a spiritual na¬ 
ture, a soul—a something in him that is neither 
mind nor body. To make no provision for the 
education of this part of us is not unwise only; it 
puts a man out of proper relations to his surround¬ 
ings. This side of his nature has something to do 
with what he thinks, what he is, and what he does. 
Substitute mind in this argument for soul. It is 
neglected, no provision is made for its cultivation, 
no schools are established, no teachers employed, 
no books written—with what result? As low as 
men could descend in the direction of the brute, 
so low would they sink. Substitute body for soul. 
Take no exercise, disregard its cravings, ignore its 
wants. The result would not be more fatal be¬ 
cause swifter, but death would follow. Common 
sense, therefore, to say nothing of religion, de¬ 
mands that every part of a man shall be properly 
trained. But the argument gathers force as we 
listen to the voice of Christianity as it speaks 
through the Catechism: “ The chief end of man 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 153 

is to glorify God.” It is useless to debate with a 
man who will not use his eyes or his reason. It 
was that brilliant French skeptic, Renan, who 
said the letter to the Ephesians was the composi¬ 
tion of a weak, old man who had a quarrel with 
the church at Ephesus, and it is of no value for 
any purpose. The man who could find in the 
Son of Mary the ideal Man in whom united all the 
virtues of perfected manhood, and yet deny his 
divinity, is the man to see no moral excellency in 
the letter to the Ephesians. It is just such moral 
monstrosities that are produced by a system of ed¬ 
ucation which ignores the moral faculties. In all 
such systems the claims of God are ignored, and 
if the end sought is not the glory of God, educa¬ 
tion not only proclaims itself to be of no good, but 
really an evil, in that it increases responsibility by 
making the capacity for doing evil vastly greater. 
If there were no religious obligation involved, the 
wisest policy for the State to adopt would be to 
make provision for the symmetrical education of 
the whole man. For the State to neglect the 
moral training of its subjects is to weaken, if not 
to remove, the strongest pillar that supports it. 

The Church is the guardian of all the interests 
that belong to humanity. Government, society, 
commerce, science, art, philosophy are the objects 


154 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

of its care. The policy that would shut out the 
influence of the Church from any of these depart¬ 
ments excludes the most important factor from the 
lives of those who enter these spheres of activity. 
The fight which the Church has to make is in two 
directions: with those who claim that science and 
religion are essentially distinct and have nothing in 
common, and with those who contend that with 
the secular world the Church can have nothing to 
do. But the Church replies, with reason and reli¬ 
gion behind it, that whatever tends to prepare the 
individual for the work of life, whatever will help 
him to do that work well and accomplish most for 
himself and his race, it is the duty of the State to 
s upply, it is the privilege of the man to have. As 
to the training of the moral faculties and the rec¬ 
ognition of God’s claims to our service, there is no 
middle ground—it is absolute and imperative. It 
is for the State and all concerned to insist that this 
education shall be either irreligious or the training 
of the moral faculties shall have chief place in it. 
Unless we have come to be a non-Christian nation, 
there is but one thing for this government to do— 
that is, to make the teaching of morality prominent 
in all systems of instruction. To do otherwise is 
to strike a fatal blow at its own existence. It pro¬ 
fesses to be founded upon the Word of God. 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 155 

How can it, with any show of consistency, allow 
that which gives stability to its foundation to be 
excluded from the training of its citizens? The 
broad principles of morality in the Bible are so 
clearly defined and generally understood that the 
question of sectarian teaching will hardly be raised 
by honest men. The government has established 
schools of every description for the proper train¬ 
ing of mind and body. It gives wholesome en¬ 
couragement to those who are seeking to lighten 
human toil and add to the comforts of life in the 
departments of mechanics and invention. Did it 
never occur to our lawmakers that the existence of 
these institutions of learning, the opening of the 
various departments of scientific investigation—all 
of which are year by year adding to our stock of 
knowledge and have already brought us as a na¬ 
tion to the foremost place among the nations of the 
earth—did it never occur to these gentlemen that 
all this is due to the presence and influence of the 
great principles of revealed religion which the 
Church stands for? It is the duty of the Church 
to say to the State: You may establish all the de¬ 
partments you please, but you must not exclude 
the Bible; you may make provision for the highest 
department of the mind and the most thorough 
training of the body, but you must not ignore the 


156 tiie mission of the church. 

moral nature. Not only must this have a place in 
your systems of education; it must have the chief 
place. You may master the spelling book and 
complete the study of arithmetic and graduate in 
Latin, but the Old Book must stay in the course 
from beginning to end. 

How is this to be done? Not by going into leg¬ 
islative halls except by petition, but first of all by 
teaching the word of God in the home, as was 
abundantly shown in the previous chapter. With¬ 
out this home training whatever may be learned in 
the schoolroom cannot take its place. Add to this 
another requisite—a devout Christian teacher— 
and you have taken a long step toward having the 
Bible taught in all of our schools. How so? The 
teacher lives his religion before his pupils. The 
parents teach religion to their children. From 
these homes and schools men are sent to the legis¬ 
lature. What has given them the best furnishment 
for their life’s work, what has become bone and 
sinew in their characters they are ready to put 
within reach of all the children of the land. An¬ 
other step in the process is the relation of the 
Church to the teacher. Practically, this branch 
of the subject may be discussed with reference to 
the duty of the Church exclusively to train the 
teachers of this country; for as a matter of fact 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 157 

ten out of every eleven of all the pupils are in 
Christian schools, and a much larger proportion 
of the teachers are educated in Christian schools. 
Beyond question, then, it is the duty of the Church 
to found and adequately endow institutions of 
learning for thoroughly training men and women 
to become teachers. Gradually, but surely in all 
the schools of the land will be found teachers who 
believe and practice and teach the principles of 
Christianity. The far-reaching effect of such a fact 
cannot be estimated. The mightiest agencies for 
training children next to the pulpit—the home and 
the school—will harmonize in this grand work of 
teaching the boys and girls of the land the founda¬ 
tion truths of the Bible. In every department of 
life will the effect be seen. Religious education 
is needed everywhere: in agriculture, in mining, 
in civil engineering, in merchandise, in the learned 
professions, as well as in those higher depart¬ 
ments of research that pertain to the origin of 
man, the construction of the universe, and the ex¬ 
istence of a Great First Cause. Possibly nowhere 
else is there more urgent need for the guiding hand 
of religion than in this last-named field. As the 
achievements of mind in its investigations of or¬ 
ganic and inorganic life in their relations to the in¬ 
troduction of life upon our planet are made known, 


158 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

the tendency is to discredit the Mosaic account of 
creation and substitute for it a theory that can get 
along without a Creator. It so happens, however, 
that the devout Christian scientist finds no dif¬ 
ficulty in reconciling the discoveries of science 
with the history of Moses. Indeed, he finds abun¬ 
dant confirmation of Genesis in the “ record of 
the rocks.’' The questions involved in such in¬ 
vestigations are too delicate for any but the most 
thoroughly trained intellects. Much of the skep¬ 
ticism of the day is due to a sad lack at this point. 
Men need accurate scholarship, ample historical 
knowledge, and above all, a firm grasp of religious 
truth, if they are to walk with steady tread the gid¬ 
dy heights of nineteenth century science. In an 
argument against the divinity of Christ a well- 
trained disputant would never have been guilty of 
the absurdity into which Prof. Huxley plunged 
when he flatly denied the story of the demoniac of 
Gadara as a historical fact. 

If these principles herein advocated are cor¬ 
rect, the duty of the Church is plain, not only to 
furnish facilities for the highest and fullest men¬ 
tal training and for the most accurate scholarship, 
but especially to provide for the teaching of the 
great underlying truths of the Bible. In propor¬ 
tion as we cultivate science must we teach reli- 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 159 

gious truth, and it should be done as dogmatically 
in this case as in the other. The late Dr. Osborne, 
of England, is authority for the story that some 
years ago two of the greatest school-teachers in 
England—Dr. Prince Lee and Dr. Arnold of 
Rugby—were wont to discuss this very point; the 
one advocating distinct, dogmatic, religious teach¬ 
ing, especially by means of the Greek Testament, 
the other preferring to leave his pupils to develop 
their own religious ideas under general Christian 
influences in an atmosphere of free but reverent 
thought. How have the two systems worked? 
“ By their fruits ye shall know them.” The one 
school has produced some of the noblest represent¬ 
atives of Christian scholarship and orthodox theol¬ 
ogy in the Church to-day; the other has given us 
not a few able skeptics, and some divines in whom 
we may love everything but their theology. 

This subject of religious education touches the 
great mass of the people as they stand related to 
one another, and to the current questions of citizen¬ 
ship and political economy. Most men are drawn 
on juries. They have to try cases that involve the 
rights of their fellow-citizens. For this they 
ought to be liberally educated; but the most es¬ 
sential qualification for reaching an impartial judg¬ 
ment as between man and man is a well-trained 


i6o 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


conscience. Prejudice is the child of ignorance. 
Partiality is the result of an unevenly developed 
nature. With minds well trained and souls dom¬ 
inated by the spirit of Christ, no man who has a 
just cause need fear the result when he goes be¬ 
fore a jury of such men. All men are invested 
with the right of suffrage. Questions of vast im¬ 
portance, State and National, are to be considered 
and settled. It is a sad commentary upon our 
boasted civilization that the questions involving 
the highest interests, if not the existence of our 
form of government itself, as well as questions 
that affect the dearest interests of our homes, are 
being settled every day by the votes of men who 
cannot read what is printed on their tickets. 
Never in the history of this government was the 
necessity greater for the hand of the Church in 
giving religious education to all the people. The 
Church has the right to be represented in every 
vote that goes into the ballot box, for every vote 
stands for so much of morality, and it is the busi¬ 
ness of the Church preeminently to give direction 
to the moral character of the voter. The Church 
has the right to be represented in every man who 
serves as a juror, because no man has the right to 
weigh evidence and decide as between man and 
man without a conscience, and the Church is es- 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION . 161 

pecially charged with educating the consciences 
of men. The Church has the right to be repre¬ 
sented in every office in the land, for no man has 
the right to administer the affairs of the country— 
as sheriff or clerk of the court, or tax receiver— 
without carrying his religion into his office; and 
the Church is above all things the teacher of re¬ 
ligion. It is no argument against this position to 
say that jurors are bribed and votes are bought 
and officers are corrupt. Rather, the position is 
strengthened when we remember that the work of 
the Church is to so educate the minds and develop 
the moral natures of men that these crimes will be 
impossible. 

Within the last few years the question of pop¬ 
ular education has assumed an importance for the 
American people that it has not had hitherto. 
General information, the universal public school 
system, with its large blessings to all alike, and a 
spirit of despotism cannot subsist together. Ob¬ 
servers of the course of events have seen with 
alarm the stealthy but steady march of the Rom¬ 
ish Church as, with pretended zeal for the public 
school system, it is seeking to put its own repre¬ 
sentatives into the public schools as teachers and 
superintendents, and thus convert them into pa¬ 
rochial schools. Already in some cities the 
11 


162 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

school fund is divided between the public schools 
and the parish schools. Where this cannot be se¬ 
cured, with a show of generosity with which 
Protestants are not credited, these pretended 
friends of the public school system tender their 
own school buildings that a public school may be 
taught in them, on the condition that Catholic 
teachers shall be employed. No Bible is to be 
taught! O no! but these women (the teachers 
they furnish are generally “sisters”) are thor¬ 
oughly versed in the most powerful arts for mak¬ 
ing deep and lasting impressions on the minds of 
the children. Hence they are allowed in some 
cases by the unsuspecting Protestants to wear all 
the emblems of their Church; and all through the 
day they cross themselves and bow the knee and 
perform other little acts of devotion, all of which 
is well calculated to give the untutored children an 
exalted idea of the sanctity of the Roman Cath¬ 
olic Church. But when these zealots advocate 
with such warmth popular education they have a 
very different idea of education from what Prot¬ 
estants have. When a Protestant sends his boy 
to school he honestly believes and earnestly de¬ 
sires that he shall take the first step in the way of 
knowledge which shall have no end. That boy 
soon finds out that he has been raised up some- 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 163 

what by what he has learned: but better still, it 
dawns upon him that this modest upheaval is only 
a stone to step on to raise himself to a higher de¬ 
gree of knowledge, and he quickly makes that 
step with unspeakable pleasure. When the son 
of a Protestant has acquired a little knowledge, 
that creates a thirst for more. And the way is 
open, and he is encouraged to go as high and 
reach out as far as he can. There are no fetters, 
no bonds, no weights here. But the Roman 
Catholic youth, feeling the glow of ambition and 
the stirrings of strong desire to be somebody, 
finds at the outset that limits are set to his attain¬ 
ments which his own abilities do not impose. 
“What is not only the first but the daily school 
lesson taught to the Roman Catholic? Is it not 
that one of the greatest crimes which a man can 
commit is to follow his ‘ private judgment,’ which 
means that he has eyes, but cannot see; he has 
ears, but cannot hear; he has intelligence, but can¬ 
not make use 3f it in the research for truth and 
light and knowledge, without danger of being 
eternally damned? His superiors—the priest and 
the pope—must see for him, hear for him, think 
for him. Yes, the Roman Catholic is constantly 
told in the school that the most unpardonable and 
damnable crime is to make use of his own intelli- 


164 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

gence and follow his own private judgment in the 
search for truth. He is constantly reminded that 
man’s private judgment is his greatest enemy. 
Hence, all his intellectual and conscientious ef¬ 
forts must be brought to fight down, silence, kill 
his ‘ private judgment.’ It is by the judgment of 
his superiors—priest, bishop, and pope—that he 
must be guided in everything.” * He can go no 
higher in acquirement, he can go no farther in 
scientific research, he can know no more than the 
infallible pontiff at Rome. If the pope says the 
world stands still, a Catholic youth cannot believe 
otherwise, though he sees incontestible evidence 
to the contrary all about him. Did not the de¬ 
servedly renowned Cardinal Newman, after oppos¬ 
ing the dogma of the pope’s infallibility with all 
the strength of his intellect, when it was adopted 
by the Romish Council as an article that must be 
believed, meekly bow his reverend head and put 
the seal of his indorsement upon this colossal ab¬ 
surdity? The policy of this hierarchy is to put 
shackles on intellect, circumscribe the sphere of 
human research by prescription and proscription, 

*“Rome and Education,” by Father Chinequy. For thirty 
years Father Chinequy was a Roman Catholic priest. He is 
now and has been for many years an honored minister in the 
Presbyterian Church. 



THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 165 

limit the range of human knowledge, and thus, 
by fastening the chains of a powerful despotism 
upon their followers, forever silence all opposi¬ 
tion. The public school system, not as Romish 
priests teach, but as Protestants understand it, is 
the handmaid of liberty—the most hateful word 
known to the “ Old Man ” at the Vatican and his 
minions; for when that word rung through the 
land of Italy it sounded the death knell of the 
temporal power of the Pope of Rome. 

It is a mistake to suppose that increasing knowl¬ 
edge among the people will rear an invincible 
bulwark for the defense of their rights against the 
encroachments of Rome. By methods that only 
unscrupulous Jesuits could conceive, this Church 
is seeking to get a footing everywhere, not that 
the people may be blessed by her ministrations, 
but that, getting into power, she may exert it for 
putting down all opposition and securely establish¬ 
ing her reign of force and fagot and fire. Her ef¬ 
frontery is unblushing. Already the man who 
speaks out against their methods, as these are at 
war with our civil institutions, is boycotted by the 
leaders in that Church. Not long ago, at Galena, 
Ill., at the unveiling of the Grant statue, a Meth¬ 
odist Episcopal minister, appointed to offer the 
opening prayer on the occasion, was requested to 


166 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

withdraw because the Romanists insisted on it, 
and threatened trouble if he did not. He had 
given offense by warning his people against the 
assaults of the Jesuits upon our public school sys¬ 
tem. The committee yielded to the demand of the 
Romanists, and the minister withdrew. You say 
that could not happen in the South. True, possi¬ 
bly, for the reason that there are so few Catholics 
in the South. What has taken place at Galena, 
Ill., may occur in Augusta, Ga., where the pres¬ 
ence of the Catholic is felt in every department of 
that city. These schemers are the enemies of hu¬ 
man liberty and are at work to overthrow this re¬ 
public. The most potent weapon they employ, as 
they have always used it, is unsanctified igno¬ 
rance. The Church must come to the rescue, or 
human liberty in the United States of America is 
a thing of the past. They are the sworn, covert, 
uncompromising enemies of human liberty, and 
hence the war they make on the public school sys¬ 
tem, which is one of the strongest friends of hu¬ 
man liberty. One or the other must go down. 
Either their iniquitous plans must fail, or popular 
education will be abolished. But if Rome should 
fail, not the Constitution of National and State 
governments, nor the police force of all combined, 
nor the general diffusion of learning can furnish 


THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION. 167 

protection for the liberties of the American people, 
but the sanctifying hand of the Church in the 
Constitution, the police force, and in the schools 
of the land. Here is, after all, the bulwark of 
American liberty and the guardian of personal free¬ 
dom. 

I have reserved to the last the discussion of the 
most important phase of this department of the 
subject—namely, the relation of woman to educa¬ 
tion. If I have correctly stated the relation of the 
home to all the departments of human life, the 
question of woman’s relation to education de¬ 
mands the most careful consideration. In the 
formation of character the mother has more to do 
than any one else. By her physical constitution 
her sphere of activity is confined largely to the 
home. In the nature of the case she has more to 
do with the child than the father, at least in the 
first years of its life. The hands of the mother 
are the gentlest, her smiles are the sweetest, her 
eyes are the mildest, her heart the tenderest and 
the most loving. At the most momentous period 
of its life the mother’s influence is the strongest. 
Abstractly considered, for purposes of self-devel¬ 
opment as well as for a thorough preparation for 
the duties of life, I fail to see why any difference 
should be made between the education of boys 


168 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

and girls. From a practical standpoint the only- 
modifying facts are differences in tastes and pur¬ 
suits which arise from differences in physical con¬ 
stitution. The woman evidently is designed large¬ 
ly for indoor life, the man for outdoor life. The 
relative number of males and females born into 
the world, 106 to ioo, points in the same direc¬ 
tion. But a miniature world can be had in every 
home—such are the facilities for putting the his¬ 
tory of the world in newspapers and books. 

The discussion of this question starts from this 
point: A boy, say, is to be fitted for his life’s 
work—for becoming, for him, the most splendid 
character and for doing the most good—in the 
home where he was born, the place of all places, 
as I have shown, where the foundation of charac¬ 
ter is laid and impressions are made that run like 
lines through the whole life. Upon whom falls 
this weightiest of all responsibilities? The moth¬ 
er. I shall hardly be accused of employing ex¬ 
travagant language when I state that no position 
on earth, as it stands related to the welfare of 
our race, gathers about it more of interest and im¬ 
portance than that of mother. The President is 
the highest officer in the land, but whether his in¬ 
fluence shall be good or bad upon the whole peo¬ 
ple depends more upon his mother’s training than 


THE CH URCH AND ED UCA TION . 1 69 

any other human factor that has helped to make 
his character. The corner stone of every charac¬ 
ter is laid in the home in the years of childhood, 
and the hand that puts it in place is the mother’s. 

Who will affirm that because the mother’s im¬ 
mediate sphere is narrower than man’s there is no 
need that she should be as liberally educated? 
On the contrary, her sphere is wider than his by 
so much as her influence over her children is 
stronger and more lasting. Her life, her charac¬ 
ter are multiplied in the lives of her children far 
more than the father’s. Through each one of her 
children she touches other children. She molds 
other lives as he does not and cannot. A spirit 
of gallantry, not to say a sense of justice, would 
say, as she is to spend her days for the most part 
shut up wdthin the narrow confines of her home, 
let her have for her own comfort all the advan¬ 
tages of a generous education. What her boy 
shall be or do in the world, as well as the rights 
of society, demand that every faculty and endow¬ 
ment of the mother shall have the fullest develop¬ 
ment. If character is of more worth than rail¬ 
roads or banks or telegraphs or factories, if it re¬ 
quires more skill and wisdom in making the for¬ 
mer than in constructing the latter, by every to¬ 
ken she who has most to do with making charac- 


170 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

ter should be the most amply equipped for her 
work. The Church presides over all and directs 
that, above all, the mother shall be a religious 
woman. While her intellect is trained and stored 
with knowledge it shall be for God and humanity. 
This child is the property of the Lord. It must 
be trained for him. She must know God as her 
Father and Christ as her Saviour. The Bible 
must be the never failing well from which she 
draws the living waters for herself and her boy. 
If any one in that home knows the mind of the 
Spirit, it must be the mother. Not the great and 
good men only, but the little and bad men as well, 
have received the impress of a mother’s hand in 
the home and have gone forth into the world to 
bless or to curse it. It is an omen of good when 
we see so much attention given to the education 
of our girls. The proportion of girls to boys in 
colleges is about three to one. These colleges are 
Christian institutions. If these girls carry into the 
homes over which they will be called to preside 
well-cultivated minds sanctified by the indwelling 
Spirit, we may confidently expect that the saving 
truths of Christianity shall appear in the lives of 
the next generation. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 

H MISSIONARY, with his wife and four chil- 
-S* dren, returned recently to the United States 
for rest and recuperation. His little boys, born 
in a heathen land, knew nothing of the ways of 
civilized people. Walking along one of the streets 
of a Southern city on a Sunday morning and see¬ 
ing the shops open and business running pretty 
much as on other days, one little fellow remarked: 
“Papa, we will keep Sunday when we go back 
home, won’t we? ” Two or three years ago I 
was in St. Louis on a Sunday. In some quarters 
of the city business was as lively as on any other 
day of the week. Passenger trains run as regularly 
on nearly all the railroads on Sunday as on other 
days. In the neighborhood of the cities Sunday 
is excursion day, and the cities pour their popula¬ 
tions out into the country. In all the cities large 
enough to support street railroads, with here and 
there an exception, street cars run on Sunday. In 
some Sunday is a gala day, and all day long the 
cars are crowded with people going to parks and 

gardens and — nowhere. I knew of no city 

( 171 ) 


172 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

with thirty thousand inhabitants that hasn’t its 
Sunday newspaper, and from early dawn to the 
middle of the morning newsboys are crying 
“Here’s your morning paper.” In some of the 
larger cities of the country the Sunday saloon has 
got to be one of the fixtures. Already the Sunday 
theater has succeeded in getting itself tolerated in 
some of the leading cities. Soon they will demand 
legal recognition, and, unless things change, they 
will get it. 

These are cold, hard facts. As Christians and 
patriots we must confront them and weigh their 
meaning. In discussing the relation of the Church 
to the Sabbath question, it is fortunate that we have 
a state of things—facts—from which to reason and 
reach conclusions. That the Sabbath question is a 
moral question none but athiests will deny. As it 
is a moral question, the Church as the guide in such 
things has the right to speak here with authority. 
More, it is her duty, through her own appointed 
agencies, to speak in plain terms. The law pertain¬ 
ing to the Sabbath does not belong to what is com¬ 
monly called the Mosaic or ceremonial law. It was 
enacted ages before Moses was born. When God 
had finished the work of creation, “ he rested on 
the seventh day from all his work which he had 
made. And God blessed the seventh day and 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 173 

sanctified it.” This is recorded in the second 
chapter of Genesis. When the moral law, or the 
ten commandments, was written God engraved 
them on stone, meaning that, while the ceremo¬ 
nial law should pass away, this would abide always. 
Among these commandments is what is known as 
the fourth commandment. Moses records it in 
the twentieth chapter of Exodus in the words: 
“ Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 
Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but 
the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy 
God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor 
thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, 
nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stran¬ 
ger that is within thy gates; for in six days the 
Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that 
in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore 
the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed 
it.” If the law which says, “ Thou shalt not 
kill,” is as old as Adam, so is this; if “ Thou shalt 
not steal ” is binding for all time, so is this. 

A religious law, when thoroughly understood 
in its workings, is found to be based in man’s 
physical and rational as well as in his spiritual na¬ 
ture. The law touching the Sabbath involves the 
idea of rest as well as that of sanctity. Mental 
and physical health requires that six consecutive 


174 THE mission of the church. 

days of active work shall be followed by one day 
of cessation from labor. The nervous system can¬ 
not long stand the drain which labor seven days 
in the week imposes. There is no time left for 
healthful recreation. Nor will one day for rest out 
of every ten suffice. That is better than no rest 
day at all, but careful observation fully confirms 
the wisdom of the divine arrangement of every 
seventh day as a day of rest. The great offenders 
against the strict observance of the Sabbath are 
the government itself in the mail service, railroads, 
and newspapers. It is not with these sinners that 
I am now contending, but the point to which atten¬ 
tion is called is the effect which Sunday work has 
upon their employees. Take the railroad engineer 
who is required to make his runs seven days in 
every week. His position is an important one. 
The lives of hundreds of people are in his hands 
every day. He is under a constant strain of nerve 
and muscle. No rest comes to his tired body but 
in sleep. The result is obliged to be a speedy col¬ 
lapse. Nor has this man any chance to cultivate 
his mind or his social nature. He has a right to the 
highest enjoyments of earth: the pleasures of 
home and family. A home under such circum¬ 
stances is only an occasional shelter. What right 
has any corporation to say to this man: “We 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 175 

want you in our service and we are willing to pay 
you for your work, but it must be on the condition 
that henceforth you are to be without a home; you 
must work for us every day in the week, Sunday 
included, and to do that will leave no time to build 
up or even think about home.” What right have 
the members of this corporation to rest in their 
comfortable homes on Sunday surrounded with 
their families, or to spend its hours in divine wor¬ 
ship, while the faithful engineer is rushing along 
the rail at the rate of thirty miles an hour? Where 
is the justice, the equity, the humanity in such 
an arrangement? These workers are men; they 
think. As the engineer’s train rushes by the man¬ 
sion of the President of his road, and he sees him 
quietly reposing in his armchair on the front gal¬ 
lery, he would be less than a man if he did not 
ask himself the question: “ Why can’t I have one 
day of rest as well as that man ? He is rich; I am 
poor. He forces me to this. He is an oppressor.” 
And forthwith the conflict between capital and labor 
starts in his brain. To save his soul he can’t resist 
the conviction that greed for gain, the love of mon¬ 
ey, grasping, hungry, and heartless, has its fingers 
at his throat. With a bitterness that springs from 
a sense of gross injustice he hisses a curse upon a 
corporation that has no respect for human rights. 


17 6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

There is another aspect of the case that invests 
it with deep and far-reaching importance. Steady 
work every day in the week leaves no time for 
moral improvement—for the cultivation of the soul, 
the regulator of life. What must a man become 
whose moral nature has no chance for education ? 
That is the sort of men this government and these 
corporations are developing. Nor is this all, nor 
the worst. Working on Sunday is turning God’s 
day into a secular day, and breaking down utterly 
its sanctity. Once make no difference in practice 
between Sunday and any other da}', and it is but 
one step to abolishing all distinction between these 
days. The right to break the fourth command¬ 
ment establishes the right to break the whole dec¬ 
alogue. What reason is left for supposing that 
any moral precept will have any force whatever? 
Now put a man with such moral education in 
charge of a train load of human beings, and what 
assurance have they that that engineer cares a fig 
beyond his own personal safety what becomes of 
them? If the railroads plead in extenuation of 
such monstrous iniquity that they are forced to run 
their trains on Sunday to save themselves from 
financial loss or to meet the demands of the public, 
the facts and opinions of men in a position to 
know, as to the loss plea, are against them. Read 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH . 1 77 

the following testimony: J. M. Robinson, Presi¬ 
dent of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad Com¬ 
pany and Baltimore Steam Packet Company, says: 
“I am opposed to running on Sunday except in 
special cases, on the ground that the business op¬ 
erations are rarely materially advanced thereby, 
and men on railroad and steamboat lines require 
one day’s rest as well as other people. In the 
Southern States I am satisfied that Sunday trains 
are run at a loss to the companies which run 
them.” Mr. A. V. H. Carpenter, General Tick¬ 
et and Passenger Agent for the C. M. and St. 
Paul Railway, evidently is of the opinion that stop¬ 
ping the Sunday train would bring no loss to the 
roads. 44 Of one thing,” says he, 44 I am certain: if 
the omnipotence of public opinion did not demand 
Sunday trains and Sunday mails, the railway man¬ 
agements of the country would be the most glad 
of any men in the world to obey the injunction: 
4 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work.’ ” 
The public upon whom the blame rests for run¬ 
ning Sunday trains, it must not be forgotten, is a 
very small fraction of the people. “ This will be¬ 
come more plain,” says a discriminating writer, 
44 as the sentiment against Sunday trains is drawn 
out and formulated. For it must not be over¬ 
looked that this question is more than one of mor- 
12 


178 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

als. It involves the right of a very large class 
of men to enjoy that rest and social communion 
which is prescribed alike by the precepts of reli¬ 
gion and the law of nature. Until this sentiment 
is formulated and its power made known it is 
hardly proper to speak of the contrary sentiment 
as omnipotent. It has been omnipotent so far be¬ 
cause the friends of the Sabbath as a day for reli¬ 
gious culture and for rest and social recreation with 
family and friends have never asserted themselves 
as they should.’’ It matters little whether the 
sentiment that runs trains on Sunday is absolutely 
omnipotent. It will continue to be practically so 
as long as no opposing sentiment exerts itself to 
stop them. Like all forms of evil, this one is 
growing at a fearful rate and is threatening to 
drive away all opposition and to dominate the life 
of the people. 

Of like character with the Sunday train is the 
Sunday newspaper. So closely are these allied 
that without the one there would be small demand 
for the other; at least, without the train the paper 
would not be called for. Each contributes to the 
growth and strength of the other. All that has 
been written against the Sunday train may be said 
with equal truth against the Sunday newspaper. 
Says the Christian Advocate (Nashville): “The 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 179 

Sunday newspaper has been voted to be a great 
crime against good morals, and especially against 
good piety; but like sins of all grades, familiarity 
destroys the sense of its enormity. We are ig¬ 
norant of the extent of this evil. Look at the fi<r- 
ures: The regular issue of a single one of the 
New York dailies, as officially announced, is over 
a quarter of a million copies every Sunday, and 
the Sunday issue of three leading New York and 
three leading Philadelphia papers is considerably 
over a half million copies. The three leading 
Sunday papers of Boston claim a weekly circula¬ 
tion of nearly three hundred thousand copies. One 
of these journals advertises that more than twenty 
thousand new readers have been gained within 
the last six months; and the printed circulation of 
another shows that an addition of thirty-five thou¬ 
sand copies has had to be made within the same 
period. To these more than half a million copies 
of from twelve to twenty pages of unsifted reading 
that are flung broadcast from two cities to all 
points of the compass, and are seen by millions of 
eyes, there must be added many more journals in 
the same cities, and all the Sunday journals of all 
the other cities and towns in the United States.’’ 
The number of men and boys actually employed 
in a newspaper office and in selling the paper is 


l8o THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

not large. Leave out of the account the damage 
that the Sunday paper does these, and what is its 
aggregate effect on society? What is the Sunday 
paper? It is simply a secular paper printed to be 
read on Sunday. The character of the reading 
matter does not differ materially from that which 
goes into the paper of any other day. If there is 
any difference, the Sunday paper has in it more 
that is hurtful to morals. There is generally a 
modicum of religious reading to save it from utter 
secularity. The news items are just like those of 
any other day; no better, no worse. Take the 
following as samples: Here is a respectable paper, 
outspoken and vigorous in its defense of law, re¬ 
form, and religion. In one Sunday issue its first 
page of six columns has, as food for Sunday med¬ 
itation, one column and a half of a murder trial, 
and notices of a rifle match, a bird-shooting match, 
the death of a foreign jockey, the theft of a ne¬ 
gro’s dead body, the conviction of a murderer, an 
old, foul suit for divorce, and the foulest crime 
known to the criminal code. This is poison of 
the deadliest sort, and Christian men pay for it 
and put it in the hands of their children. 

Here is another sheet whose principal propri¬ 
etor is a leading and influential Christian. Under 
the head of “Telegraphic Items” we have the 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. iSl 

following in the Sunday issue: 4 ‘An Organist and 
Choir Leader Arrested for Bigamy/’ “Terri¬ 
ble Tragedy/’ “An Outlaw Killed,” “Roughs 
Shot,” “Arrest of a Coroner,” “An Insane 
Kick,” “Shot His Son,” “Lynched,” “Shot at 
a Festival,” “Executed for Murder,” “Indian 
Chief Murdered,” “Murder at a Barbecue.” 
These, with seven items from races and seventeen 
tidbits from police courts, make one and one- 
sixth columns. As a rule the Sunday paper has 
the stories, good, bad, and worse, sensational, 
dramatic, not always decent even. If ever a hu¬ 
man being was convicted for sin or built up in the 
divine life or was led into a richer Christian ex¬ 
perience by reading the modern Sunday newspa¬ 
per, the fact is not recorded. Such a curious 
product would deserve to be set down as one of 
the wonders of this wonderful nineteenth century. 
On the contrary, the hurt that comes to the moral 
nature is fearful. Business men advertise in the 
Sunday paper special bargains for Monday. 
Hundreds of customers are secured in this way. 
What must be the thoughts of those who have 
filled their minds with news items of burnings and 
murders and assaults and political contests, at¬ 
tractive advertisements of hats and bonnets and 
shoes and dress patterns, overalls, etc., filled in 


182 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

and tied together in the brain with accounts of the 
last opera, the craze over some Italian woman’s 
dancing, the wine-card party at one of the most 
fashionable residences on Tip-Top Street? How 
can one hear a gospel sermon under such circum¬ 
stances? What chance has the truth, that saves 
and feeds the soul, to find its way to the heart 
through such a hotchpotch of froth and filth? The 
Sunday paper starts out by being a double law¬ 
breaker, violating the civil law, which forbids 
work on Sunday, and the law of God, which says, 
“ Six days shalt thou do all thy work.” It tempts 
thousands of others to turn the day of the Lord 
into an unhallowed day by its attractive bill of 
fare which appeals most of all to the elements in 
man’s nature which should, for his good, be held 
in subjection, especially on the day set apart for 
the cultivation of his moral nature. It is largely 
responsible for the demand for the news at all the 
railroad stations in the country. News butchers 
carry an extra supply of the Sunday paper, know¬ 
ing full well that the demand will be great. He 
sells his papers and the buyers pay for them on 
Sunday, the Sunday train uniting with the Sun¬ 
day paper in breaking the law and profaning the 
Sabbath. If the readers of the great daily should 
take the editorial advice spread out in a “ lay ser- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 183 

mon” now and then, and make Sunday a real 
Christian day of rest and worship, the Sunday pa¬ 
per would soon go out of print. With what sort 
of consistence can the editors of Sunday papers 
work themselves into a frenzy of righteous indig¬ 
nation, as they write red-hot words that fairly 
blaze with patriotic fire over some act of lawless¬ 
ness of more than ordinary turpitude, while they 
themselves are guilty of a crime every week 
against God and man which, if universally prac¬ 
ticed, would bring universal anarchy? Only a 
few days ago one of the strongest dailies in the 
land fell into a moralizing mood and had this to 
say: “ It is frequently said that if all Churches 
and Church people would make a vigorous, unit¬ 
ed, consistent, and constant attack upon any evil 
practice, it would not be able to withstand it. We 
believe that this is not claiming too much.” How 
is this to be done? “ The first thing these Chris¬ 
tian people should do is to Christianize public 
opinion.” And how is this to be done? “Let 
every citizen,” our moral editor tells us, “ who is 
on the side of Christianity appoint himself a com¬ 
mittee of one and go to work, and he will very 
soon find that his preacher, his editor, his lawyer, 
his neighbor are standing shoulder to shoulder 
with him. That is the way a just public opinion 


184 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

is formed—by speaking for the right and working 
for the right/’ 

But what sort of maker of public opinion is this? 
The same paper that gave that exhortation last 
Sunday threw its weight against keeping the Sab¬ 
bath holy and on the side of lawlessness. The 
men who break the law at one point for money 
will come to have no conscience about breaking it 
at any point. The spirit that, for whatever rea¬ 
son, deliberately and persistently treads down the 
law in one particular is the spirit of universal an¬ 
archism. It will soon come to ignore all human 
rights. If it can force men to work double time 
on half pay, it will not hesitate to do it. In its last 
analysis it is a grinding despotism, as heartless 
as it is grinding. Are Sunday papers such mon¬ 
sters? Not yet, nor will be, chiefly because the 
same spirit of lawlessness which they live by they 
are faithfully instilling into their readers. 

The Church is set for the defense of the Sab¬ 
bath as a day of rest and religious worship. In 
discharging this trust it encounters no stronger 
enemy than the Sunday newspaper. It (the pa¬ 
per) is at war with the teachings of the Church at 
this point. If it antagonizes the teachings of the 
Church at this point, it opposes the Church at all 
points—that is, it undermines faith in what the 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 185 

Church teaches. But the Church is appointed to 
teach the Bible and to be a guide in morals. 
Once the people lose confidence in the Bible as 
the defositum of infallible truth, as the only un¬ 
erring teacher and guide in morals, and a long 
step has been taken toward anarchy and national 
decay. But without intending it, this is precisely 
what the Sunday paper is doing. Already very 
many contend that the printed moral essay is bet¬ 
ter than the spoken sermon. Others have taken a 
step further, and affirm that the Church is behind 
the times, its teachings are antiquated, the Bible 
is no better nor more authoritative in morals than 
other books. As a result, the teachings of the 
Book are discounted or discarded. The Sunday 
paper, as far as it has influence, shuts the doors 
of Churches, depletes our congregations, and 
keeps the people at home on Sunday, or leads 
them to desecrate the Sabbath by turning it into a 
day of recreation and amusement. The Govern¬ 
ment itself is taking a hand in this assault upon 
the Sabbath by forcing its army of employees to 
handle the mail on Sunday. Itself a breaker of 
its own law, as well as of the law of God, how 
can it with consistency demand obedience to any 
law? Are men mad? Have they no regard for 
or knowledge of the teachings of experience? Do 


186 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

they not know that neither men nor nations have 
any safeguard for the liberties of the one or the 
existence of the other when God’s law, which 
says that men shall do no work on the Sabbath, 
is ruthlessly trampled under foot? Have they 
never read history? Are they ignorant of the des¬ 
olation which swept France as with a whirlwind 
when that nation defied God, abolished the Sab¬ 
bath as a holy day, and cast insult upon the Bible 
by dragging it through the streets of Paris tied 
to the tail of an ass? De Tocqueville said: 
“France must have your American Sabbath, or 
she is ruined.” The American Sabbath of to-day 
will ruin France or any other nation. That was 
said some fifty years ago. America must return 
to her Sabbath of seventy-five or one hundred 
years ago, or she is ruined. 

The two greatest enemies of the Sabbath, as 
already stated, are the Sunday train and the Sun¬ 
day paper. The Church is responsible for the 
existence of both. As long as Christian ministers 
and Church members ride on the cars on Sunday, 
and Church members buy and advertise in the 
Sunday papers, the Church is handicapped in its 
defense of the Sabbath by being at war with itself. 
Its own members own and ride on the Sunday 
train; its members own and read the Sunday pa- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 187 

per. It is no answer to this indictment to say 
that, as a stockholder, one man cannot dictate the 
policy of a corporation. Better have no financial 
interest in the paper or the railroad at all than to 
enjoy the profits of a business which breaks God’s 
law every Sunday. If the Church would be free 
to fight these and all other violations of the Sab¬ 
bath, it must withdraw itself from all connection 
with them. But if the Church steadily sets at de¬ 
fiance the authority of God’s word touching the 
observance of the Sabbath, how can she claim to 
have authority to teach and enforce obedience to 
any of the divine commandments? The world 
must be made to see that Christian people believe 
the teachings of the Scriptures and recognize their 
authority in this matter. In other words, they 
must set before the world the example of a consci¬ 
entious and consistent observance of the Christian 
Sabbath. Until the Christian people of this coun¬ 
try can be brought to recognize and discharge 
their obligations in this matter, we shall see no 
substantial reformation. It would be contrary to 
reason to expect any. The wealth of this coun¬ 
try is largely in the hands of Church members. 

After all that may be said as to why certain lines 
of business are run on Sunday, if they did not pay 
they would not be run. If, therefore, the Church 


188 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

people who have money invested in enterprises 
that are operated on Sunday were to say, “ Our 
money shall not be used to run these enterprises 
on Sunday,” not a train would run, nor a newspa¬ 
per be published on Sunday from Maine to Mexi¬ 
co. If, also, the Church members who have no 
financial interest in these enterprises should say, 
“ We will not patronize a business that breaks the 
Sabbath,” that business could not be operated. 
The proposition is true, therefore, that at the door 
of the Church must be laid the responsibility for 
the stupendous crime which the railroads and the 
newspapers perpetrate every Sunday in the year. 
As the proposition is likewise true that the 
Church is chargeable with whatever of evil it has 
the power to prevent, all the demoralizing and de¬ 
basing influences of the Sunday train and the 
Sunday paper, together with their hurtful conse¬ 
quences, the Church is responsible for. There 
must be a radical reformation in the Church her¬ 
self before she can exert any moral force for Sab¬ 
bath observance. 

If the Church were consistent in its life, it could 
secure any legislation it might desire. The laws 
touching Sabbath observance already on the stat¬ 
ute books would be faithfully enforced. It is re¬ 
sponsible for the preservation of the Sabbath as a 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 1S9 

civil institution. Its obligation is measured by its 
ability; and concerning its ability in this direction 
there can be no question. “ The Church of the 
United States has been intrusted by its divine 
Head with immense power. It is strong not only 
in numbers, but in all the elements of influence. 
But this power is held as a trust, and the time is 
coming when the Church will be called to an ac¬ 
count of its stewardship. The possession of this 
power ought to secure to this country a better ob¬ 
servance of the Sabbath than is found in any oth¬ 
er great nation on the globe. If it is conscien¬ 
tiously and wisely employed, this end will be ac¬ 
complished. If there is a failure to secure it, the 
responsibility is with the Church.” Doubtless 
the Church does not possess the power to the ex¬ 
tent the writer just quoted claims for it. If num¬ 
bers and money counted for power, the Church 
could indeed accomplish anything it might under¬ 
take. But, alas! the main element of strength is 
lacking: spirituality. 

It is generally believed that furnaces for manu¬ 
facturing iron and steel cannot be closed on Sun¬ 
day without heavy loss. John Fulton, General 
Mining Engineer, Cambria Iron Co., Johnstown, 
Pa., says: ‘ 4 It is difficult, if not impossible, to be¬ 
lieve that any intelligent manager of iron works, 


190 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

superintendent of furnace, or furnace keeper, can 
seriously entertain the idea that furnace work 
compels men to break the Lord’s day. 

Every intelligent furnace superintendent knows 
that it is quite practicable to rest the furnace on 
the Sabbath day.” A large number of furnaces 
rest on the Lord’s day, both in this country and 
in Europe. Seventeen are reported from one 
State to London Iron without exhausting the rec¬ 
ord. Baird, of Scotland, rested all his furnaces 
on the Sabbath day, and closed a very successful 
life by a final donation to the Lord’s treasury of 
a quarter million of dollars. One famous mana¬ 
ger testifies: “ We do not claim that we can make 
as much iron in six days as we could in seven, but 
in the long run, a year, Sabbath-keeping furnaces 
make more than those who do not.” And so it is 
proved in this case also that not only is there no 
necessity for running furnaces on Sunday, but 
that it pays to run only six days in the week. 

The Church stands so related to the due ob¬ 
servance of the Sabbath that she is bound to de¬ 
fend it, and for the same reason that she insists 
that every commandment in the decalogue shall 
be faithfully kept. If “ Thou shalt not kill ” is of 
divine authority and binding upon all for all time, 
so is “Thou shalt keep the Sabbath day holy.” 


THE CHURCH AND THE SABBATH. 191 

The Church itself cannot exist without the Sab¬ 
bath. The Bible is no Bible without the Sabbath. 
In defending the Sabbath, therefore, the Church 
is making a light for its own existence, and for 
the Bible itself. Destroy the Sabbath, and you de¬ 
stroy religion and begin the backward march to 
barbarism. The infidels of France were acting 
logically. They aimed at the overthrow of Chris¬ 
tianity, and one of the first steps was the abolition 
of the Sabbath. How well they succeeded is a 
matter of history. One of the first things Napo¬ 
leon did when he came to the empire was to re¬ 
quire a strict observance of the Sabbath. All 
past history confirms the verdict of Greece and 
Rome that no nation ever did thrive without a re¬ 
ligion. The Sabbath is the corner stone of the 
Christian religion. And in the French Assembly 
it was declared, in defense of the Sunday law, 
that the best nations in the world were those that 
kept the Sabbath best. The Church, therefore, 
in defending the Sabbath, is not only fighting for 
its own existence and for the Bible, but for the 
perpetuity of the government. The God of the 
nations has made their enjoyment of his favor de¬ 
pend, so far as human conditions are concerned, 
upon their honoring the Sabbath; and declared 
that every nation that refuses to heed his law in 


192 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

this respect shall perish. ‘ 4 It is time for men who 
claim to love God to draw the line and leave the 
World to trample under foot the law of God. Let 
those who are on the side of righteousness stand 
uncompromisingly for the sacred privilege of the 
sanctuary, uphold the right of the toiler to his day 
of rest, and thunder the law’s denunciations 
against conscienceless, money-loving corporations 
that through the love of money (the root of all 
kinds of evil) grind the poor, oppress the laborer, 
demoralize the land, and bid defiance to the God 
of all the earth.” If the Church fail to lift up 
her voice in behalf of the Sabbath, who or what 
organization will do so? If no voice is heard, if 
the Sabbath have no defender, what will become of 
the nations of the earth? “We are, therefore, 
constrained by every consideration of duty and 
wise expediency, with utmost stress of moral 
urgency, to beseech men everywhere in this land, 
and especially our great corporations of all sorts, 
not only to refrain from weakening the respect of 
men for the Lord’s day, but to lend their power¬ 
ful aid in all legitimate ways, to enhance the esti¬ 
mate put upon it, and to perpetuate it inviolate to 
coming generations.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


THE CHURCH AND POPULAR AMUSEMENTS. 

JW$HE Church is set for the defense of spiritual 
^ life, and whatever hurts spiritual life she is 
bound to oppose. With a unanimity that must 
have great weight with thoughtful people the 
evangelical Churches of every age have spoken in 
plain, strong language in condemnation of certain 
forms of amusement as hurtful to the morals of 
those who take part in them. Holy men and 
women in all the Churches, as they have wit¬ 
nessed the bad effects of the theater and the dance 
upon the religious life, have with one voice spoken 
against them. It means something that the wisest 
and best men—men that “ watch for souls as they 
that must give account”—have no word of ap¬ 
proval for the so-called popular amusements of the 
day. That the opinions of these sanctified people 
are regarded as antiquated and behind the times, 
and are for that reason, or one less defensible, ig¬ 
nored, but intensifies the duty of the Church at 
this time to “cry aloud and spare not.” At no 
point is the danger to spiritual life and the purity 
of the Church greater, nor is the responsibility of 
13 ( 193 ) 


194 THE mission of the church . 

the Church to stand up for the right heavier any¬ 
where than here. 

Let it be admitted that it is perfectly natural to 
love amusements, plays—diversions that bring out 
in healthful expression the humorous side of hu¬ 
man nature. It is natural to laugh; we love to 
laugh; it does us good to laugh. A hearty laugh 
promotes good feeling, aids digestion, drives away 
melancholy, cures the blues, and puts us in a good 
humor with everybody. Recreation of this sort, 
when that which produces it is pure and harmless, 
ought to find a place in the lives of all who are 
shut up to treadmill work, which is imposed by 
many of the avocations of the day. The student 
needs relief from his books. The desire for play 
when school is out, and sometimes when it is not 
out, is as natural for the child as the inclination to 
go to sleep when it is tired. Grown men and 
women do not outgrow this desire for recreation; 
it simply takes on a different form. Like every 
tendency of human nature that seeks gratification, 
it may be perverted until to yield to its demands 
would be positively sinful. “ The purest and 
most useful of all our faculties may be so used as 
to destroy themselves and corrupt the character, 
but the fact that they may be and often are so 
used is no argument against their proper use.” 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 195 

“The reaction against licentiousness, avarice, 
ambition, and worldliness to the other extreme of 
forbidding all amusements,” says a judicious 
writer,* “ beginning in the first centuries of the 
Christian Church and still continuing in some of 
its branches, known in history under the name of 
‘ asceticism/ was one of the greatest blunders the 
human mind ever made in its search for truth. A 
pall of darkness was thrown over the day God 
had made; the joys he had instituted and sancti¬ 
fied were excommunicated and outlawed, the nat¬ 
ural propensities ordained for man’s good were 
cursed and forbidden. Pleasure was a sin, pen¬ 
ance a duty, suffering a virtue, and man was made 
fit for heaven by making himself unfit for earth; 
while all the music, sweetness, beauty, and joy 
of the world were attributed to the devil and were 
remanded to him.’ 

Has the Church nothing to say about this tend¬ 
ency of our common humanity? Here is a force 
in human nature: has the Church no duty with 
reference to it? Can it not be so guided and 
molded as to add materially to one’s capacity for 
doing good? He who lifts up his hands with holy 
horror at the idea of the Church going into the 
amusement business for the entertainment of the 


*Rev. S. M. Vernon, D.D. 



196 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

children and young people would better get back, 
if possible, some of his childhood’s experiences 
and learn again how much of his young life was 
made up of fun and frolic. There is morality in 
every element of our nature that is constitutional. 
Sin is not responsible for the playful, fun-loving, 
rollicking natures of the children; if it is, we owe 
pretty much all the sunshine that comes into our 
homes through the children to the work of sin in 
the hearts of the dear little ones. Christian teach¬ 
ers are coming to understand the duty of the 
Church to train this side of their pupils for right¬ 
eous ends, and not allow it to run wild in the 
fields of vice. It involves physical exercise, the 
healthful flow of animal spirits, the cultivation of 
what may be called the aesthetic faculties, as well 
as mental relief and enjoyment. There is moral¬ 
ity in such recreation, and the Church must have 
something to say as to what its nature shall be. 

This brings us to consider the moral character 
and the effects upon moral character of those pop¬ 
ular amusements that are most popular with the 
world and least popular with the Church. I men¬ 
tion first the theater. The theater, in some form, 
dates as far back as one thousand years before 
Christ. Indeed, the propensity to dramatic repre¬ 
sentation of human character seems to be a part of 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 197 

human nature. For this purpose magnificent 
playhouses have been built, gorgeous stages erect¬ 
ed and equipped, and men and women have de¬ 
voted themselves to the business of presenting 
with lifelike vividness the various and varying 
passions of the human soul. Whatever may have 
been the original design of its founders or promot¬ 
ers, certain it is that the theater soon became a 
stage for the exhibition of the most corrupt and 
corrupting appetites that belong to fallen human¬ 
ity. And if the testimony of those who are famil¬ 
iar with its history is to be believed, its character 
has not greatly changed for the better through all 
the years. As the first witness, I will ask Plato, 
a pagan who knew nothing of the refining influ¬ 
ences of Christianity, to take the stand. Hear 
him: “ The diversions of the stage are dangerous 
to the temper and sobriety of mind. They rouse 
the feelings of anger and desire too much. Trag¬ 
edy is prone to render men boisterous, and comedy 
makes them buffoons. Thus those passions are 
cherished which ought to be checked, virtue loses 
ground, and reason becomes uncertain.” Aris¬ 
totle: “The law ought to forbid young people the 
seeing of comedies until they are proof against de¬ 
bauchery.” Solon forbade “theatrical exhibi¬ 
tions as pernicious to the popular mind.” Cicero 


198 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

declares that 44 comedy subsists on lewdness.” 
Livy informs us that 44 a theater was being erected 
under the direction of the Censors, and Scipio Nasi- 
ca urged in a motion or decree before the senate that 
the theater was a useless establishment, and its ex¬ 
hibitions destructive of good morals.’’ As a re¬ 
sult, the senate 44 passed a decree which leveled the 
walls of the unfinished theater with the ground.” 
Seneca says: 44 Nothing is so injurious to good 
morals as the loitering in theaters, for there vice 
makes an insensible approach and steals upon us 
in the disguise of pleasure.” Gibbon names, 
among the causes of the downfall of Rome, the 
corruption of the people by theatrical exhibitions. 

But the patrons of the theater, freely admitting 
the truth of the indictment against the ancient the¬ 
ater, contend that the stage has grown in purity as 
it has grown in years. Listen to what that elegant 
English essayist, Addison, has to say: 44 Were our 
English stage but half so virtuous as that of the 
Greeks and Romans, we should quickly see the 
effect of it in the behavior of all the politer part of 
mankind. It is one of the most unacccountable 
things that the lewdness of our theater should be 
so much complained of, so well exposed, and so 
little redressed.” Sir Matthew Hale says that 
when he was at Oxford University he 44 made great 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 199 

proficiency in his studies, but the stage players 
coming thither he was so much corrupted that he 
almost entirely forsook his studies.” Mr. Wilber- 
force affirms that “ the debauchee, the sensualist, 
the profane have ever found in the theater their chos¬ 
en resort for enjoyment.” Sir John Thompkins 
remarks that “ the playhouse is the very hotbed of 
vice, and wherever planted becomes surrounded 
by a halo of brothels.” Judge Bulstrode, in 
charging a jury, said: “ One playhouse ruins more 
souls than fifty churches are able to save.” 

In 1778 the American colonies, feeling their de¬ 
pendence upon God and their need of his help, 
through the Congress passed a law providing for 
the dismissal from office of any officer of the 
United States who should be found in attendance 
upon a theater. Soon after independence was de¬ 
clared Congress adopted the following resolutions: 

Whereas true religion and good morals are the only solid 
foundation of public liberty and happiness; 

Resolved, That it be and is hereby earnestly recommended 
to the several States to take the most effective measures for the 
suppression of theatrical entertainments, horse racing, gam¬ 
bling, and such other diversions as are productive of idleness, 
dissipation, and a general depravity of principles and morals. 

If such is the uniform testimony of pagans, Greek 
philosopers, Roman orators and sages, Eng¬ 
lish essayists, jurists, and philanthropists, and 


200 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


American legislators, what would we expect the 
Church to say as to the character of the theater? 
Its lovers and supporters will find little comfort 
here. While in those countries only nominally 
Christian, where the Sabbath is simply a holiday, 
there is but little conscience on the character of 
the theater in its grossest and most revolting exhi¬ 
bitions, in all those nations where the Sabbath is a 
day of rest and worship the conscience of the 
Church is quick and unanimous in its opposition 
to theatrical performances as they are rendered in 
modern times. Calvin exterminated it in Geneva, 
Knox abolished it in Scotland, and “ the Scotch 
Presbyterians are a solid phalanx against the thea¬ 
ter.” John Wesley says: “The theater not only 
saps the foundation of all religion, but also tends to 
drinking and debauchery.” Clement calls it “ the 
chair of pestilence.” Archbishop Tillotson says of 
certain parents that “they are such monsters that, 
instead of bringing their children to the house of 
God, they bring them to the devil's ckafels , flay- 
houses , places of debauchery, those schools of 
lewdness and vice.” The law of the Methodist 
Church against “ diversions that cannot be used 
in the name of the Lord Jesus” is interpreted to 
include theaters. The Baptists and Presbyterians 
stand shoulder to shoulder with the Methodists in 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 201 

their opposition to the theater. 4< An English writ¬ 
er in the time of Charles II. made a catalogue of 
authorities against the stage, which contains every 
name of eminence in the heathen and Christian 
world; it comprehends the united testimony of the 
Jewish and Christian Churches; the deliberate 
acts of fifty-four ancient and modern general, na¬ 
tional, and provincial councils and synods, both of 
the Western and Eastern Churches; the condem¬ 
natory sentence of seventy-one ancient fathers and 
one hundred and fifty modern Catholic and Prot¬ 
estant authors.” 

The character of the actors themselves is an 
overwhelming argument against the purity of the 
stage. To this general indictment it is freely ad¬ 
mitted there are here and there conspicuous ex¬ 
ceptions, whose unsolicited testimony is proof at 
once of the strength and purity of their own char¬ 
acters and of the vileness of the theater. It is not 
surprising that the stage produces such a demoral¬ 
izing effect. Men and women who hire them- 
seves to play a role and act a part subject them¬ 
selves to the molding influence of the characters 
which they represent. If these characters are vile 
or not up to the standard which virtue and moral¬ 
ity require (as is usually the case with dramas), 
they will inevitably be dragged down to the same 


202 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


level of moral degeneracy. The prurient tastes of 
a depraved public demand that fallen humanity 
shall be portrayed on the stage in its vilest forms 
for the gratification of lustful appetite. And to as¬ 
sume that a man can act the part of deception, in¬ 
trigue, murder, fraud, treachery, robbery, and in¬ 
fidelity with brain on fire and heart enlisted with 
absorbing interest, and not be tainted by it, is to be 
guilty of the most stupid absurdity. Strong, noble 
characters are the product of naturalness and truth¬ 
fulness; weakness the most pitiable and vicious¬ 
ness the most inexcusable are the logical result of 
appearing in a false light. The route is short and 
the journey quick to the complete overthrow of 
character. Cicero in his “ De Republica ” informs 
us that Rome passed a decree by which “ common 
players were expelled their tribe, and, like the fel¬ 
ons of our penitentiaries, deprived forever of all 
rights of citizenship.” There is not a mother who 
would not rather bury her daughter than to expose 
her to the influences of the greenroom and the 
stage. If such is the case, if the idea of going on 
the stage is so shocking to the finer sensibilities of 
Christian fathers and mothers, with what show of 
consistency can they allow themselves or their 
pure daughters to patronize an institution that be¬ 
smirches the character of the whole troupe from 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 203 

the leading playwright down? If the history of 
what transpires behind the curtains could be faith¬ 
fully told, many a so-called Christian father and 
mother would never darken the door of a theater 
again. Many a “stage-struck’’ girl, whose silly 
parents are dazzled by the “ extraordinary talent” 
of their daughter for the drama and are blind to 
its impurity, would be deterred from taking a step 
that would prove her ruin. The Church must 
speak out through her ministry, and give whole¬ 
some warning to the guileless and unsuspecting 
youth of the land. When Sarah Bernhardt visit¬ 
ed London, the noble Canon Wilberforce, with 
true ministerial courage, said: “ She has dared to 
come to London, bringing her illegitimate children 
with her, and flaunting her skirts in the very face 
of royalty.” Then, turning to the Prince of Wales, 
he said: “It is the nation’s disgrace that Briton’s 
future king should so far forget what belongs to 
the dignity of his station that he should visit this 
woman in the theater greenroom and speak face 
to face to her flattering words.” 

But listen to the testimony of one who has main¬ 
tained the spotlessness of an unsullied character 
in the midst of influences that debauch those who 
are weaker. Edwin Booth declared that he did 
not permit his wife and daughter to see a play 


204 THE mission of the church . 

without previously ascertaining its character, and 
that the theater had become a mere shop for gain, 
open to every huckster of immoral gimcracks. 
Macready, one of the most celebrated English 
tragedians, would not permit his daughters to at¬ 
tend the theater. Now if, as theatermongers con¬ 
tend, the theater is a school of morals and a teach¬ 
er of the higher duties of life, how does it come 
to pass that the actors themselves, who are the 
supposed teachers of these noble qualities, so sel¬ 
dom give practical exhibition of their teachings? 
Why are they not found taking the lead in move¬ 
ments that look to purifying the morals of the 
community? There isn’t a clean, pure young 
man in all this land who would be willing to see 
his sister tread the boards in stage dress. 

The character of the plays is enough to damn 
the whole business, drama, comedy, tragedy, op¬ 
era, and all. The witnesses here shall come from 
the camp of the enemy. The art critics, who 
write up the stage for the press, are themselves 
patrons of the theater. Here is what one has to 
say in the New York Evening Post: “ There has 
probably been a greater mess of meretricious rub¬ 
bish set on the New York stage during the last 
ten years than during the whole of its previous 
existence.” Another writer in the Philadelphia 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 205 

Press says: “ The stage has reached that point of 
degradation which Dr. Johnson deprecated and 
Byron deplored.” And he speaks of the “ moun¬ 
tebanks ” of the playhouses and “their disgrace¬ 
ful descent into the darkest ages of the drama.” 
“Twenty-five years ago,” writes the art critic of 
the Chicago Tunes , “ such an exhibition as is 
nightly made in this class of amusements (mod¬ 
ern comic opera) in the most matter-of-fact way 
would have gone nigh to landing the whole party 
in the police station.” Still another defender of 
the theater writes in the Chicago Tribune: “ The 
mess of rot and rubbish that is constantly being 
offered up for the delectation of Chicago theater¬ 
goers is simply appalling, and the pabulum of 
food to-day at most of our theaters—nay, more, at 
all of them—from London to Hong Kong, right 
around the world, is little better than trash.” 
“Trash” he interprets as that which “disgusts 
the discerning and contaminates the innocent 
spectator.” These are some of the milder forms 
of expression which these press writers employ to 
characterize the modern theater. The language 
they use when they wish to give a faithful pen 
picture of the plays, the actresses, the stage cos¬ 
tumes, and attitudes, etc., is too utterly filthy to 
be transferred to these pages. 


206 7772 ? OF THE CHURCH . 

Do you ask why the Church opposes the thea¬ 
ter? The answer is found in the testimony of 
those who know the thing as it is. The friends 
and supporters of the playhouse are the wit¬ 
nesses. Is there anything good or wholesome in 
it? They do not let it be known. Is there any¬ 
thing in the plays themselves, with their endless 
series of plots and intrigues and compromising 
positions and flings at virtue and apologies for 
vice, their false views of life, their appeal to the 
baser passions of human nature, and the constant 
incitement to their gratification—is there anything 
in all this that is promotive of purity or helpful to 
spirituality? Why, you still insist, does the 
Church array itself against the theater? Be¬ 
cause attendance upon the theater destroys the 
Christian’s influence for good. A young lady, 
very sick and fearing that she might die, called 
for a minister. She was asked if the Presbyteri¬ 
an elder across the way would not do as well. 
“No,” she said; “he goes to the theater, and I 
am afraid his prayers would do me no good.” A 
writer who has given this subject much thought 
has this also to say: “The attendants upon the 
theater from within the Church are of the less 
spiritual portion of its membership. They are of 
those who have little to say about Christian expe- 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 207 

rience, ‘ whose delight’ is not ‘ in the law of the 
Lord,’ even in reading it, who are not specially 
fond of the social meetings of the Church for 
prayer and religious conference, who are not very 
earnest in saving souls, and in visiting and pray¬ 
ing with the sick and dying. They may be effi¬ 
cient in conducting sociables, managing fairs, at¬ 
tending to the financial interests of the Church, 
and doing many good things, but in those ele¬ 
ments of Christian life which give best proof of 
genuine devotion, reflect most honor upon the 
gospel, and bring most glory to Christ they are de¬ 
ficient.” The world judges rightly of the Chris¬ 
tian character of those members of the Church 
who attend the theater. Ungodly people go to 
the theater in search of pleasure. They are 
shocked when they find so-called Christians seek¬ 
ing happiness in the same way. They know that 
the Church member professes to be living not for 
self, but for the glory of God and the good of his 
fellows; not for the pleasures of this world, but for 
the beauties and riches of a heavenly inheritance; 
not to be conformed to this world, but for transfor¬ 
mation into the likeness of Christ. To find a mem¬ 
ber of the Church by his side in the theater and 
enjoying the play as heartily as himself is for the 
man of the world to lose all confidence in his reli- 


208 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

gion. If such an unthinkable thing could be im¬ 
agined as that a genuine Christian could go to the 
modern playhouse and receive only spiritual help, 
still his usefulness would be destroyed, and many, 
encouraged by his example, would fall an easy 
prey to the vices that are gilded and made attract¬ 
ive to catch the weak and the worldly. Let all 
who value their soul’s salvation above the evanes¬ 
cent pleasures of physical excitement give heed to 
these words of wisdom from the pen of that saint¬ 
ly woman, Hannah More, who earnestly endeav¬ 
ored to reform the theater, but without success: 
“ I do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce the 
theater to be one of the broadest avenues that lead 
to destruction; fascinating no doubt it is, but on 
that account the more delusive and the more dan¬ 
gerous. Let a young man once acquire a taste 
for this species of entertainment and yield himself 
up to its gratification, and he is in great danger of 
becoming a lost character, rushing upon his ruin. 
All the evils that can waste his property, corrupt 
his morals, blast his reputation, impair his health, 
embitter his life, and destroy his soul, lurk in the 
purlieus of the theater. Vice in every form lives 
and moves and has its being there. Light and 
darkness are not more opposed to each other than 
the playhouse and the Word of God. If the 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 209 

Scriptures are to be obeyed, the theater must be 
avoided.” A committee of the English Parlia¬ 
ment, a few centuries ago, after a full investiga¬ 
tion of the subject, reported that the only way to 
reform the theater was to burn it down. Age has 
not improved its morals. 

The Modern Dance. 

A minister of the gospel must confess to igno¬ 
rance of many things which he feels called on, for 
various reasons, to condemn. Precisely what the 
most modern form of dancing is I do not know. 
However, the evidence as to the moral character 
of the whole thing is abundant, and is of two 
kinds: (1) The testimony of those who “have 
been there,” and (2) the effects upon those who 
frequent the dance as these effects are seen in 
their lives. The institution I am discussing is the 
modern promiscuous dance participated in by the 
sexes. The Church must give a valid reason for 
its opposition to this form of amusement. For 
sensible people, just one view is enough to con¬ 
demn it. There is nothing intellectual or spiritual 
in it. Its chief attraction is the physical exhilara¬ 
tion which it produces. And even this form of 
excitement constitutes no attraction except as the 

sexes take part together in the dance. Here is 
14 


210 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


the ciiarm and the evil of the thing. Separate the 
sexes and all the attraction of the dance is gone. 

The dance has a place in history. “ The He¬ 
brews in their heroic age were accustomed to ex¬ 
press their religious joy in modulated movements 
of the body.” On the anniversaries of great 
events and on solemn national occasions it was re¬ 
garded as proper for a company of women to stim¬ 
ulate the common joy by dancing. A notable in¬ 
stance is the dancing of Miriam and the women 
with her, who sung and danced on the occasion of 
the overthrow of Pharaoh and his hosts in the Red 
Sea. David danced “with all his might” before 
the ark of the Lord when it was brought up to Je¬ 
rusalem. Doubtless the Church would interpose 
no serious objection to that sort of dancing. Pla¬ 
to says that among the Egyptians, as was certain¬ 
ly true of other nations, dancing was never an 
amusement, and gives it as his opinion that it 
should never be employed except in divine wor¬ 
ship. “ In early times those who perverted it 
from a sacred and religious use were considered 
profane and infamous.” This began among the 
Greeks in the feasts of Bacchus. Cicero says: 
“No one dances unless he is drunk or mad.” 
So utterly corrupt was it that disreputable persons 
hired themselves to dance for those who were will- 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 


211 


ing to pay the price. Its character has not im¬ 
proved by being transferred to the haunts of civ¬ 
ilization. 

The Churches—Protestant and Roman Catho¬ 
lic—are all the sworn enemies of the dance in 
every form. Experience shows that the least ob¬ 
jectionable leads to the most objectionable and to 
things that are worse. The Episcopal Church, in 
its representative bodies, condemns it: Metho¬ 
dists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, and indeed all 
evangelical Churches, have raised a warning voice 
against the vices that lurk in the modern dance. 
Why? Have these leaders of religious thought, 
these watchmen on the walls of Zion, been led 
into a ridiculous blunder in their zeal and earnest 
efforts to save the young people from a great evil 
when no evil exists? Some years ago I fell into 
a good-natured discussion with a young friend on 
the evils of dancing. He was a stout defender of 
the dance. He met me at every point with the 
plea that it was a social pastime, and that no evil 
results could be expected. He admitted that all 
forms of dancing led to the round dance, and in 
that form of it he could see no harm. I said to 
him: “ How would you like to see your sister in 
the arms of a young man as is the fashion in the 
round dance?” His face flushed and his eye 


212 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


flashed as if the thing were actually going on be¬ 
fore him, and he almost hissed the reply: “I 
wouldn’t stand it.” What the present “ stand¬ 
ing ” of this “innocent” diversion is, I do not 
know; but this happened in the home of a lady 
near where I live within the present year, as she, 
with shame for her sex, confessed: Two or three 
young men met a like number of young ladies at 
her house for the first time. During the evening 
there was waltzing. She had not seen any since 
she was a girl. When the young men left, this is 
what she said to one of the young ladies: “I 
never got closer to my husband than you were to 
that young man to-night.” Any sensible man 
knows that the innocence will soon evaporate 
from an attitude of that sort. That, I am told, is 
the modern round dance—in a private house. 

The tax which the fashionable dance imposes 
upon the physical system is fearful. Heated 
rooms, fetid air, prolonged exercise, late hours, 
chilly atmosphere, insufficient clothing, are enough 
to undermine the strongest constitution. Colds 
are contracted, followed by pneumonia and con¬ 
sumption, a shattered nervous system, and in a 
few years a new-made grave. The body is the 
temple of the Holy Ghost; it is God’s property. 
It contributes much to hearty spiritual service 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 213 

when it is strong and healthy. Put undue strain 
upon its powers, sow in it the seeds of disease, fill 
it with aches and pains, and the mind is seriously 
hindered in doing its appointed work. Whatever 
one does to impair its vital forces and destroy its 
usefulness is a sin not only against the body, but 
against God, to whom it belongs. 

Dancing is not only useless as a means of phys¬ 
ical development, but it disqualifies for mental ex¬ 
ertion. The habitual dancer, who expects to 
spend the social hours in heel and toe exercises, 
cannot be enlisted in a conversation for mental 
pleasure and improvement. An intelligent lady 
in New York said: “What can I do with my 
company? The people of fashionable society do 
not read; they are not capable of sustaining an in¬ 
teresting conversation, and there is no way of en¬ 
tertaining them but by letting them dance.’’ One 
would suppose that it were better to live to one¬ 
self than to have such people for associates. 

But these are not the worst results of promis¬ 
cuous dancing. It lays its lecherous hand upon 
the fair character of innocence, and converts it 
into a putrid, corrupt thing. It enters the domain 
of virtue, and with silent, steady blows digs the 
foundation from underneath the pedestal on which 
it sits enthroned. It lifts the gate, and lets in a 


214 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

flood of vice and impurity that sweeps away mod¬ 
esty, chastity, and all sense of shame. It keeps 
company with the low, the degraded, and the vile. 
It feeds upon the passions it inflames, and fattens 
on the holiest sentiments of humanity, turned by 
its touch to filth and rottenness. It loves the 
haunts of vice, and is at home in the company of 
harlots and debauchees. This is the general in¬ 
dictment. That there are men and women, not a 
few, of pure, uncorrupt natures, who now and 
then engage in the dance, is freely admitted, but 
they are the more conspicuous because of the 
smallness of the number. 

It is difficult to say just what ought to be said 
on such a subject as this; and but for the sake 
of the young, who are inexperienced and unsus¬ 
pecting, I would willingly refrain from writing an¬ 
other word. The Church is here to protect the 
young and save them from the evil influences 
about them. The Church must speak out against 
dancing as it is commonly practiced, because the 
close relations into which the sexes are thrown are 
such as to influence the animal passions to a very 
high degree. ‘ 4 It is night, and darkness shuts off 
the outer world; the delicious intoxication of har¬ 
mony in music and motion fires the blood; the 
heaving breasts and beating hearts are brought 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 


21 5 


into close contact;” privileges are taken and al¬ 
lowed that, under ordinary circumstances, would 
ostracise the offenders from decent society. For 
the rest, go to the chiefs of police in our cities, 
who will tell you that the majority of fallen women 
began their downward course in the ballroom. 
How can fathers and mothers, who want their 
daughters to remain always the same—pure and 
spotless—suffer them to be brought under the in¬ 
fluence of a social custom that has strewn its path¬ 
way with multiplied thousands of wrecked woman¬ 
hood? The whole thing is utterly bad. Born in 
the feast of Bacchus, its strongest supporter to¬ 
day is the wine cup. Its tendency is downward, 
its effect is degrading; from virtue to vice, from 
purity to impurity, is the route always. 

Card Playing. 

Before closing this chapter on “amusements,” 
a few words must be said touching card playing 
and kindred diversions. A thing may be harm¬ 
less in itself, but it may lead to that which is pos¬ 
itively hurtful. Experience must guide us here. 
Card playing is almost invariably associated with 
gambling. Without check, the one invariably 
leads to the other. The effect of gambling is 
strikingly portrayed by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew 


216 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


in the following words: “A considerable propor¬ 
tion of the failures in business, and ninety per 
cent, of the defalcations and thefts and ruin of 
youth among people who are employed in places 
of trust, are due directly to gambling. It is the 
one vice which seems to destroy immediately the 
moral sense, and to obliterate that absolutely es¬ 
sential quality in employer and employee, in the 
custodian of his cash, in the trustee of his estate, 
in the son and his mother’s or sister’s property— 
fidelity to the trust, the violation of which destroys 
the violator and ruins the people who confide in 
him. I have seen in my vast employment so 
much misery, from the head of the family neg¬ 
lecting its support and squandering his earnings 
in the lottery or the policy shop, and promising 
young men led astray in a small way and finally 
becoming fugitives or landing in the criminal 
dock, that I have come to believe that the com¬ 
munity which licenses and tolerates public gam¬ 
bling cannot have prosperity in business, religion 
in its Churches, or morality among its people.” 
It is for this reason that the Church, as the teach¬ 
er of morals, feels called upon to speak out in op¬ 
position to this form of amusement. Are parents 
who join their boys and girls in a social game of 
cards ignorant of the fire they are kindling in 


THE CHURCH AND AMUSEMENTS. 217 

their blood, which will be fed by and by with 
“chips” at the gambler’s table? Cards are 
edge tools that cut unskillful fingers which handle 
them. Card -playing leads to gambling; so does 
playing billiards. Dr. McCosh, President of 
Princeton College, made an attempt to restrain 
the students from improper gaming by supplying 
them with billiard tables. In a few months he 
found that the evil had been aggravated, and that 
many young men had been led into gambling and 
dissipation. A minister in New York City, be¬ 
lieving that billiards would attract and furnish 
healthy recreation for young men, attached a bil¬ 
liard room to his church. He became so excess¬ 
ively fond of playing himself that he had to resign. 
He made another attempt of the same kind in a 
neighboring city, became more deeply involved 
than before, contracted the habit of drinking, and 
finally died a drunkard. The habit of playing 
cards is fearfully on the increase. Christian par¬ 
ents ornament their mantels and their center ta¬ 
bles with packs of cards. There is a fascination 
about the game which draws its devotees into an 
excitement that must be stimulated with wine and 
money. The end is not far to seek nor hard to 
find. For one who believes that life is “ real and 
earnest,” there is no time to fritter away in such 


2l8 the mission of the church. 

profitless amusements. For one who is running 
the race to the kingdom, time is too precious to 
be thrown away on such useless indulgences. 
For one who feels that the time given here is to be 
devoted to doing good and helping to save men by 
leading them to Christ, card playing is a wicked 
perversion of the blessings of heaven. 

Why does the Church oppose the theater, the 
dance, card playing, and the like? Because, one 
and all, they lead no soul to Christ, they give no 
aid to a better life, they furnish no food for spirit¬ 
ual growth, they give no fondness for the social 
meetings of the Church, they add no charm to the 
fellowship of the saints, they do not make the place 
where God meets the soul in prayer bright with 
celestial light, they impart no strength for meeting 
the serious duties of life, they bring no joy in 
times of grief, they give no support when storms 
rage around us, they build no rock for faith to rest 
on in the hour of death. They help to build up 
what is bad, and they hinder and tear down what 
is good. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 

^^HEREVER the saloon is strong the Church 
** is weak. The saloon is the enemy of good 
government and the foe of decent society. It is 
the destroyer of peace in the home, prosperity in 
business, harmony in the community, and of sta¬ 
bility in the government. It fosters and strength¬ 
ens the worst passions that belong to humanity. 
Its effect, if not its business, is to blight the bright¬ 
est prospects of young manhood and to degrade 
pure and unsullied character to the level of the 
brute. It barters beer for brains, wine for wis¬ 
dom, liquor for immortality, debauchery, crime, 
and hell for purity, innocence, and heaven. For 
the coin that drops into its tills it gives back mad¬ 
ness, the police court, disgrace, the chain gang, 
and death. It steals the joy from the heart of the 
devoted wife, and puts in its place pain and ache 
and anguish. It shuts the door of heaven, and 
opens the gateway to hell. It is the sum of all in¬ 
iquities. 

The Christian Intelligencer says: 66 Unspeaka¬ 
bly serious are the facts that the saloons of the 

( 219 ) 


220 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


United States send eighty thousand youths annual¬ 
ly down to drunkards’ graves; that they affect 
more families and slay more persons than war and 
pestilence, that they are the chief cause of pauper¬ 
ism, crime, and insanity; that they are the chief law¬ 
breakers in every community, the resorts where 
crime centers; that they are dens of profanity, 
lewdness, and ungodliness; that they are the open 
enemies of the Church of Christ and of almost 
every endeavor to improve the moral condition of 
men; that they fill thousands of homes with brawl¬ 
ing, violence, and long-continued anguish.” Is it 
strange that the Church is the uncompromising 
enemy of the saloon? 

One can hardly restrain a feeling of utter con¬ 
tempt for a man occupying the responsible place 
of a minister of the gospel, of age and experience, 
who would give such cringing, cowardly advice as 
the following to a young preacher seeking advice 
as to how to deal with the liquor traffic in his pul¬ 
pit ministrations: “It will require great care,” 
says this clerical counselor, “to keep the reins 
well in hand, so that you can manage the often 
none too pious men on whom you have to depend 
to supply the money for carrying on the Lord’s 
work on an adequate scale. The preaching of 
the gospel in a way not to offend has become a 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 


221 


science. It has taken centuries to evolve this 
science in its present perfection. . . . Regard¬ 
ing the particular question about which you inquire, 
you should be careful to make a broad distinction 
between, for instance, a wealthy brewer and a 
wicked dive keeper. Your congregation will prob¬ 
ably stand by you in anything you may say about 
saloon keepers, but it would not do to imperil your 
influence for good by attacking a respectable whole¬ 
sale dealer or classing him in the same category 
with common saloon keepers.” It is just such 
supporters of the saloon inside the Church that 
weakens the power of the Church to drive out the 
saloon. 

In its relation to the saloon the Church has but 
one question to ask: “Is it helpful or hurtful to 
the highest interests of humanity? ” That settled, 
its attitude toward the saloon is fixed. For the 
sake of the argument it might be admitted that the 
aggregate revenues of a community are largely in¬ 
creased by the presence of the saloon, and that 
the burden of taxes is greatly lightened. But if, 
on the other hand, its effect upon the morals and 
best interests of a people is hurtful, the Church 
has but one thing to do: seek to exterminate the 
saloon. It is proposed to show in this discussion 
that, by every token, the saloon has no right to ex- 


222 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


ist. Much good was done and much progress was 
made in bringing this colossal iniquity of this age 
into the clear light of truth by showing the evils of 
drinking ardent spirits. The friends of humanity 
have advanced up this stream to its source, and 
now with all the force of reason and righteousness 
they are seeking to dry up the saloon, the prolific 
fountain that sends forth a multitude of streams of 
evil to ruin homes, desolate the land, and sweep 
immortal souls into hell. Remove the cause, and 
the effects disappear. That is what the Church is 
undertaking to do. 

We know a cause by its effects. An engine of 
seventy tons’ weight flying along the rails at the 
rate of forty miles an hour pulling 2,400,000 
pounds of freight gives an idea of the strength of 
steam. The force and fierceness of the cyclone 
is measured by the dismantled forests and deso¬ 
lated homes that mark its track. The springing of 
all nature into newness of life in the springtime, 
the growing crops, the abundant harvest of ripened 
grain, reaching the almost fabulous sum of hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of bushels of corn and wheat, 
the vast quantities of water that rise in vapor and 
descend again in floods of rain, sweeping away 
the strongest barriers that human skill can erect— 
these give an idea—only an idea—of the force of 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 223 

heat and light that lie hid in the rays of the sun. 
In this way we can form some conception of what 
the saloon is. To begin with the least important of 
its effects, it costs those who patronize it, according 
to the latest estimate, $1,200,000,000 per annum. 
The time lost going to and from the saloon, in loi¬ 
tering about the streets and along the highways, in 
lying up during a protracted debauch, the breaking 
of buggies, wagons, etc., while in a state of intoxica¬ 
tion, the money spent in treating others, the amount 
lost by stealing, the weakening effect upon the 
physical constitution—when the total effects of this 
monster evil are summed up, they reach, on a con¬ 
servative basis, the enormous sum of $2,200,000,- 
000 per annum, or $34 for every man, woman, and 
child in the United States. It would be safe to 
say that not more than one-tenth of the people 
drink either whisky or beer. The drink bill, 
therefore, of those who spend their money for ar¬ 
dent spirits is an average of $340 per capita. The 
resources of this country are inexhaustible, or such 
a fearful drain would bankrupt the people. I said 
this was the least of the hurtful effects of the sa¬ 
loon. Look at another. The Herald of Health 
gives the following startling result of a study of the 
posterity in ten families of drinkers and ten fami¬ 
lies of nondrinkers: “The direct posterity of the 


224 THE mission of the church. 

ten families of drinkers included fifty-seven chil¬ 
dren. Of these, twenty-five died in the first weeks 
and months of their life, six were idiots, in five a 
striking backwardness of their longitudinal growth 
was observed, five were affected with epilepsy, 
five with inborn diseases. One boy was taken 
with cholera and became idiotic. Thus of the fif¬ 
ty-seven children of drinkers only ten, or 17.5 per 
cent., showed a normal constitution and develop¬ 
ment. The ten sober families had sixty-one chil¬ 
dren, five only dying in the first weeks; four were 
affected with curable diseases of the nervous sys¬ 
tem, two only presented inborn defects. The re¬ 
maining fifty—81.9 per cent.—were normal in their 
constitution and development.” Look at these 
figures. Out of fifty-seven children in the families 
of drinkers, only ten showed a normal constitution, 
twenty-five died in early childhood—the result in 
part, doubtless, of the whisky habit—the rest re¬ 
vealed epilepsy, idiocy, and inborn diseases of vari¬ 
ous kinds; while of the sixty-one children in the so¬ 
ber families, only five died in early childhood, and 
only six others did not show a normal development. 
Think of what this means for a whole nation. If 
only 17.5 per cent, of the children in the families 
of whisky drinkers show a normal development, 
what is to be the future of a nation whose children 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 225 

are the victims of the rum habit? If there is an 
outrage upon helpless innocency in this fair land, 
it is this unspeakable curse which falls upon so 
many children. “ It is an affront to nature, a li¬ 
bel upon God. Nothing more pitiful, no injustice 
more cruel, is known among the children of men. 
The custom of the Hindoo mothers who threw 
their children into the Ganges to be devoured by 
crocodiles was almost like a harmless civilized pas¬ 
time compared to this wide-spread custom of trans¬ 
mitting epilepsy, idiocy, and general constitutional 
depravity to the children of Christian America.” 

Take another result. There is no business that 
demands more skill, clear-headedness, and hon¬ 
esty in its management than the banking business. 
For this reason the Voice , a leading temperance 
journal, sent the following questions bearing upon 
total abstinence to the Presidents of several banks 
in the Eastern and Middle States: 

“1. How are an applicant’s habits with refer¬ 
ence to the use of intoxicating liquors and the fre¬ 
quenting of barrooms likely to affect his chances 
of securing employment in your place of busi¬ 
ness? 

“ 2. Other things being equal, would you pre¬ 
fer a total abstainer to a moderate or an occasion¬ 
al drinker as an employee? and if so, why? ” 

15 


226 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


The following are some of the answers: 

Charles M. Joseph, Second Vice President 
Metropolitan Trust Company, New York, says: 
“ i. Such an applicant would not be considered a 
moment. 2. Decidedly, yes. Such a man is al¬ 
most certain to be moral, self-respecting, and wor¬ 
thy of confidence.’’ 

W. Vannorden, President National Bank of 
North America, New York, writes: “ 1. No ap¬ 
plication would be entertained from any one ac¬ 
customed to frequent barrooms, or who used in¬ 
toxicating liquors in any way, no matter what oth¬ 
er advantages might be offered. 2. A young man 
must be a total abstainer: he cannot safely drink 
moderately. The habit has too great a fascination 
for one to trifle with, and the only safe course is 
to avoid the use of liquor altogether.” 

Joseph F. Thomson, Cashier Seaboard National 
Bank, New York, says: “ 1. Moderate use of 
liquors would be against him. If he were in the 
habit of frequenting barrooms, we would not em¬ 
ploy him. 2. Yes, the moderate use of liquors is 
dangerous, as the tendency is toward drunken¬ 
ness.” 

Edward L. Tead, President National Exchange 
Bank, Boston, Mass., says: “ 1. Couldn’t have 
such a man in the bank; have in the year past 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 227 

discharged one or two such men after trying in 
vain to save them. 2. By all means a total ab¬ 
stainer. A moderate or occasional drinker is sure 
to go by the board sooner or later. He is too 
doubtful a man to employ.” 

H. M. Leetz, Vice President Centennial Nation¬ 
al Bank of Philadelphia, writes: “ 1. None such 
would be knowingly employed by this bank. 2. 
We would: because a man that can honestly 
claim to be a total abstainer will almost invariably 
come up to the highest standard of morality.” 

Benjamin P. Lane, Cashier Atlas National Bank, 
Boston, Mass., writes: “ 1. A frequenter of bar¬ 
rooms or user of intoxicating liquors would stand 
no chance whatever. 2. Most certainly a total 
abstainer would be considered preferable under 
all circumstances.” 

The unanimous opinion among bank managers 
is that even the moderate use of intoxicants pro¬ 
duces such a hurtful effect upon the mind and 
moral character that it disqualifies one from at¬ 
tending to the duties of a clerk in a bank. 

It is sometimes contended that there is a hy¬ 
gienic demand for whisky in small quantities; but 
the fournal of Health , which is high authority, 
affirms that “the day is past when upon dietetic 
or medicinal grounds there is any indispensable 


22b 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


call for the moderate or habitual use of alcoholic 
beverages.’ ’ 

Prof. William H. Draper, a leading practitioner 
of New York, in an address on alcohol, before the 
New York Academy of Medicine in November, 
1886, says: “The effects of alcohol on nutrition 
are harmful and deteriorating to such a degree as 
to constitute the most powerful cause of physical 
degeneration at the present day. Of this I think 
there can be no question.” “The debate before 
the Pathological Society of London,” says the 
medical editor of the JVejv York Independent , 
“ expressed a general professional view in accord 
with what has been quoted. Since then the ex¬ 
haustive clinical lectures of Dr. Harley, of Lon¬ 
don, have shown most fully'the effects of moder¬ 
ate drinking, and how much the public and indi¬ 
vidual health is involved in the habit.” 

Dr. N. S. Davis, an ex-President of an Interna¬ 
tional Medical Congress, and for forty years and 
still an active practitioner in Chicago, says: 
“There is no greater or more destructive error 
existing in the public mind than the belief that the 
use of fermented and distilled drinks does no 
harm so long as they do not intoxicate. 6 It is not 
the temperate use, but the abuse of alcoholic 
drinks that does harm,’ is the often repeated pop- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON . 229 

ular phrase that embodies the error which helps 
to rob more than 100,000 persons of from five to 
twenty years of life in the United States, through 
the gradual development of chronic, structural 
diseases induced by the daily use of beer, ale, 
wine, or distilled spirits, in quantities so small as 
at no time to produce intoxication. No more true 
or important remark was made in the noted dis¬ 
cussion in the London Pathological Society than 
the one by Dr. George Harley, that 4 for every 
drunkard there were fifty others who suffered 
from the effects of alcohol in one form or an¬ 
other.’ ” 

44 I have tested the matter for myself,” says Dr. 
J. A. Brown, 44 for I have now treated forty thou¬ 
sand cases of disease entirely without alcoholic liq¬ 
uors. I never prescribed to that extent to make 
men drunkards, and I am thankful to say that for 
the last three years I have not prescribed a single 
spoonful of intoxicating liquor for any person 
whatever.” 

Look again. It is said that a tavern keeper 
who had abandoned the traffic in ardent spirits 
was observed to show deep regret and sorrow 
whenever the subject of his selling liquor was re¬ 
ferred to. One day a friend inquired the cause. 
44 1 will tell you,” he said, opening his account 


230 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

book. “ Here are forty-four names of men who 
have been my customers, most of them for years. 
Thirty-two of these men, to my certain knowl¬ 
edge, now lie in drunkards’ graves; ten of the re¬ 
maining twelve are now living, confirmed sots.” 
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, of England, re¬ 
cently declared that “nineteen-twentieths of the 
cases that came before him for trial were directly 
or indirectly the result of drink.” We are so ac¬ 
customed to such items in the daily press that we 
take little notice of statements like the following: 
“Rum killed Edward Haley, thirteen years old, 
whose parents reside at No. 272 Twelfth Street, 
Jersey City. He and John Murphy, who is five 
years his senior, were fighting in the Erie Railroad 
yard late on Sunday night. Haley was no match 
physically for Murphy, and he was being severely 
handled, and sometime after he was conveyed 
in an ambulance to the Second Precinct Police 
Station. He was limp and apparently lifeless. 
City Physician Hoffman was summoned. Life 
was extinct, and he unhesitatingly declared that 
the boy’s death had been caused by alcoholism.” 

“John Ulrich Gamper, a socialist, fifty-nine 
years old, shot and probably fatally wounded his 
wife, Tressa, last night, at his home, No. 22 
Scholes Street, Brooklyn. When Gamper fired 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 231 

the shot his victim was bending over the prostrate 
form of his seventeen-year-old daughter, Augusta, 
who was lying on the kitchen floor, suffering from 
a brutal assault at the hands of her father. He 
has been drinking heavily of late. The family 
(which consists of Gamper, his wife, and two 
daughters) occupies the second floor of the dwell¬ 
ing. For some time the girls have supported 
the household. Last night Gamper came home 
drunk,’’ and the usual result followed. 

Cardinal Manning, when he was nearing his 
eightieth year, and not long before he died, said: 

4 4 The chief bar to the working of the Holy Spirit 
of God in the souls of men and women is intoxi¬ 
cating drink. I know no antagonist to that good 
Spirit more direct, more subtle, more stealthy, 
more ubiquitous than intoxicating drink. Though 
I have known men and women destroyed for 
all manner of reasons, yet I know of no cause 
that affects man, woman, child, and home with 
such universal and steady power as intoxicating 
drink.” 

The open saloon is the friend of vice, the ally 
of corruption, and the strong supporter of social 
imfurity. It is the enemy of righteousness, the 
foe of virtue, and the destroyer of the home. It 
is a powerful temptation to allure the young and 


232 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

the weak into the meshes of the destroyer. It is 
the open gateway to sin and shame, a premature 
grave, an eternal death at last. It robs the de¬ 
voted wife of the strong husband on whom she 
leans for support, and without a pang it snatches 
the noble boy from the side of a loving mother. 
Wife and mother in one stands helplessly by as 
she beholds with breaking heart the ruin which 
this monster of iniquity is bringing into her home. 
The rose leaves her cheek, and the luster goes out 
of her eye. Care groves its lines in the face that 
was once lighted up with the joy that thrilled her 
bosom. One by one her home comforts are 
drowned in whisky. One by one spoons and 
knives and forks and chairs and dresses go for 
whisky. The fist of the drunken husband, now 
thoroughly imbruted by whisky, has so often 
fallen with a cruel thud upon her unresisting 
shoulders that she looks for it now as her part of 
the effects of the open saloon. Long ago hope 
spread its wings and sped away from that an¬ 
guished heart forever. Now she sits and watches 
the downward course of the saloon’s victim, and 
only wonders how long it will be before he drops 
into the grave. Long ago the man in the white 
apron has ceased to welcome the vagabond at the 
counter over which he passes damnation’s fire by 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 233 

the drink. As one looks upon this picture, fear¬ 
fully vivid because fearfully real, he lifts his voice 
in earnest pleading to the God of the helpless, and 
cries: “ How long, O Lord, how long must help¬ 
less womanhood and innocent childhood be the 
unprotected prey of the open saloon? ” 

Who is responsible for the presence of the sa¬ 
loon and its work of destruction? Thinking men 
must face the issue. Men who are intrusted 
with the welfare of society and the interests of a 
whole people must locate this responsibility where 
it belongs. Again I ask who is responsible for the 
existence and effects of the saloon ? The man who 
sells the whisky? Undoubtedly, in part. Where 
does he get the right to set up his saloon? It is 
not a natural right, else there would be no license 
to pay. Those who grant the license give him 
the right to sell whisky. Who are “ those?” 
The city council. Who gave the city council a 
right to issue a liquor license? The law. Who 
made the law? The people’s representatives. 
How did they get to be lawmakers? By the 
votes of the people. Squirm and wriggle as 
we may, here is where the responsibility for the 
existence of the saloon lies. By a well-known 
law, a principal is responsible for what his agent 
does. The saloon is the agent of the people, and 


234 THE mission of the church. 

the people, therefore, are responsible for what the 
saloon does. Who sells whisky at No. 143 
Broadway? The citizens, through their agent, 
Bill Jones, the barkeeper. Who runs that saloon 
at No. 57 Dog Alley? The State of Georgia, 
through its agent, Jim Brown. Who brews beer 
at 759 Bridge Street? The United States Gov¬ 
ernment, through its agent, Hon. W. E. Shufler. 
Who is the United States Government? The 
Christian people of this nation. Who is the State 
of Georgia? The Baptists and Methodists and 
Presbyterians, etc., who live in this common¬ 
wealth. Who is the city of Rome? The Chris¬ 
tian people and others who live within its cor¬ 
porate limits. “But I didn’t vote for whisky.” 
You voted for the men who granted license to sell 
it. You put them in office to represent you, and 
they are doing it. “ I didn’t vote at all.” You 
are as responsible for that saloon as the other man, 
that did vote. By another well-known law, if a 
man witnesses the perpetration of a wrong, and 
does nothing to prevent it, he is responsible for 
the wrong. The State of Pennsylvania holds all 
who were present at the Homestead riot, and did 
nothing to prevent it, guilty of the blood that was 
shed at that time. If you do nothing to put men 
in office who will not grant a license to sell whis- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 235 

ky, and allow men to be elected who will grant 
such license, you cannot lift your eyes to heaven 
and say: “ I am innocent of the blood of the man 
whom this saloon’s whisky has killed.” 

How long will the government—National, State, 
and municipal—be guilty of the crime of murder¬ 
ing its own subjects? How long will the people 
be guilty of murdering their neighbors and fellow- 
citizens ? How long will the men who say prayers 
and sing songs and hear sermons in the churches, 
by voting or not voting, say to the broken-hearted 
wives and mothers of the land: “ We love money 
more than we care for your heartaches, your suf¬ 
fering, and your poverty. We must have revenue 
to run our town government; and if we can raise 
it this way, we will have a few more dollars for 
ourselves. This is worth vastly more to us than 
your comfort, your happiness, your peace? ” The 
day of judgment is coming, and it is the duty of 
the Church to let all such heartless lovers of 
money know that such inhuman conduct is un¬ 
speakable wickedness. The Church must pro¬ 
claim with trumpet tone that he who votes for 
the men who license the saloon is responsible for 
all the evil that the saloon does, for every murder 
that is committed, for every heart that is made to 
bleed, for every home that is made desolate, for 


236 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. ' 

all the woe and wretchedness and poverty that are 
traceable to it. 

What, then, is to be done with the saloon? Let 
the Church speak—God’s messenger on earth to 
proclaim his will. There is but one note from 
every land, from every Church, and that is: 
“Abolish the saloon. It is the enemy of our race 
—deadly, crafty, determined. It does no good, 
but evil always; it must go. It degrades our men, 
it ruins our boys, it destroys our homes, it buries 
sixty thousand of its victims every year, it swal¬ 
lows up $2,200,000,000 of property annually; it 
must go. To tolerate it is a sin; to cast our ballots 
to perpetuate it is to be guilty of its crimes. That 
we will never do; it must go.” But how? There 
are some faint-hearted ones who, having watched, 
as they say, this fight for years with a yearly in¬ 
crease of the liquor and beer making business, con¬ 
clude that the saloon is a necessary evil, and that 
we must get along with it the best we can. To 
begin with, it is absurd to call evil necessary. 
No matter what the adjective used to describe it, 
the business of the Church, having learned its 
character, is to fight it to the death. That saloons 
can be closed up and kept closed has been demon¬ 
strated again and again. That much to encourage 
those who are ready to give up the fight. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 237 

The Church stands ready to adopt any measure 
for abolishing this evil that has reason and facts to 
sustain it. There are many who contend that by 
concentrating the business in a few houses and 
putting a high tariff on the privilege of selling 
whisky this end will be utimately reached; or, at 
auy rate, the danger will be less than the harm 
done by “ blind tigers ” under prohibition. This 
plausible argument has been so often and so com¬ 
pletely overthrown by the facts that it ought to be 
abandoned. Take just one case as an illustration: 
The Census Bureau has just issued a bulletin giv¬ 
ing “ statistics of manufactures ” in St. Louis in 
1890. Under the head of “Malt Liquors” we 
have the following figures: 


Year. 

No. of Estab¬ 
lishments Re¬ 
porting. 

Capital. 

Total Amount 
Paid in 
Wages. 

Value of 
Product. 

1880. 

23 

8 

$ 4,184,600 
15,910,417 

$ 634,988 
2,278,194 

$ 4 . 535,630 
16,185,560 

1890. 



This measure the Church cannot advocate, be¬ 
cause it has signally failed. But one course is 
left: prohibition. The evil is not lessened by any 
other method. Because whisky drinking is not 
wholly abolished and all men are not sober is not 
a sufficient argument against prohibition. The 
Church has been all along waging an uncompro¬ 
mising war against sin, and yet sin still exists. 













238 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

Nevertheless, the only attitude the Church can oc¬ 
cupy toward sin is one of antagonism. The efforts 
of the Church cure at some points and restrain at 
others, all the time looking to the eradication of 
sin. It does not commit the folly of undertak¬ 
ing to extirpate sin by putting its indorsement 
upon it. 

It is the last effort of a lost cause to deny facts. 
The friends of the saloon ring the old threadbare 
charge in our ears that “ prohibition does not pro¬ 
hibit.” No one pretends to say that a prohibitory 
law will put a stop to all whisky drinking, any more 
than a law against murder will put an end to all 
homicides. Cases of drunkenness still occur and 
doubtless will continue under the most rigid en¬ 
forcement of the law against both making and sell¬ 
ing whisky. Nevertheless, the public moral gain 
will be vast when the open saloon is closed and its 
power to tempt weak men and boys is destroyed. 
New Hampshire is a semiprohibition State; Maine 
and Vermont are prohibition States. For the year 
ending June 30, 1890, there was collected in these 
States for internal revenue on manufactures and 
sales of spirituous liquors six cents per capita. 
For the same period revenue was collected as fol¬ 
lows in the following licensed States: Massachu¬ 
setts, 45 cents per capita; Connecticut, 23 cents; 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 239 

New York, 46 cents; New Jersey, 34 cents; Penn¬ 
sylvania, 64 cents. In 1880 Kansas paid of the 
total internal revenue collections from the manufac¬ 
ture and sale of intoxicants . 1434 per cent. In 1891, 
after ten years of prohibition, Kansas contributed to 
the same only .0474 per cent. The National Tem¬ 
perance Advocate thus sets forth the condition of 
Iowa under prohibition: “The last vestige of the 
State debt of Iowa has recently been liquidated; 
the amount was not large, and the quota of the di¬ 
rect tax for Iowa refunded to that State under the 
act of the Fifty-first Congress, which was lately 
paid from the national treasury, sufficed entirely 
to pay its lingering territorial indebtedness, and 
Iowa as a State does not now owe a dollar. This 
is quite conclusive that Iowa has not been ruined 
by prohibition.” 

Is this a political question? Yes. And do you 
propose to drag the Church into politics? No, 
but it is proposed to put the Church with its teach¬ 
ings in the conscience of every citizen of this re¬ 
public, so that he will become the sworn enemy of 
the saloon. It is proposed that the Church shall 
give such instructions as to the enormity of the 
crimes that are committed every day by means of 
the saloon that, in sheer self-protection, all classes 
of men will band together to drive this monster of 


240 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

iniquity from the face of the earth. The saloon 
in America has become a national nuisance, an 
ever-present menace to life and property. It can 
no longer be endured; it must be abated, it must 
be exterminated. “No louder call for relief 
comes up from earth than that which c'omes from 
the rum-smitten homes of the land. The chariot 
of Tullia as it dashed on but disfigured the dead; 
that of rum crushes out the hopes and the lives of 
the living. The liquor traffic is the licensed ma¬ 
chinery which turns health into disease, decency 
into rags, love into estrangement or bitter hatred, 
young beauty into loathsomeness, mothers’ milk 
into poison, mothers’ hearts into stone, and the 
image of God into something lower than a brute. 
Bidding defiance to God and man, it cries: ‘ Drive 
on ! drive on ! ’ ” The liquor power of this coun¬ 
try seeks to control legislation in its own interest. 
Its representatives are on the ground in the halls 
of Congress and the State Legislatures, working 
to have laws passed to tighten its octopus hold upon 
the fife of the nation. Its grasp must be loosened, 
its power must be broken. To this blessed work 
the Church is pledged by every interest that is dear 
to the home and to humanity. This child of the 
devil fears nothing as it does the united, deter¬ 
mined assault of the Church upon its fortifications. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SALOON. 241 


Born in lust and fostered by corruption, it dreads 
nothing as it does the light which its own results 
reflect upon itself. Let the world look at the rec¬ 
ord the saloon has made and is making, and every 
true man and every pure woman will be arrayed 
in an undying effort to drive it from the land. 

16 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE CHURCH AND MONEY. 


¥ HE right use of money is a legitimate subject 
for the Church to consider. A thing that is so 
generally desired and needed certainly has a mor¬ 
al side. With this side,of money the Church has 
to do. As to the proper use—that is, the right¬ 
eous use—of money, the Church claims the right 
to speak with authority. 

All money and all that money represents belongs 
to God. No matter in whose hands it may hap¬ 
pen to be at any given time, he is simply a trustee 
for the time; the money belongs to God. By 
trading, by working no one acquires the owner¬ 
ship of money as against God. First, last, and all 
the time, the money belongs to God. It is quite 
possible to commit a sin in the method adopted for 
getting money into one’s possession, and guilt may 
be incurred in the use that is made of it. Injustice 
may be done to others, fraud may be practiced, ex¬ 
tortion may be used. The motive for acquiring 
and spending it may be wrong. Even holding on 
to it may be wicked. There is no one thing that 

touches men at so many points as money. That 
( 242 ) 


THE CHURCH AND MONET. 243 

it is a legitimate thing, a necessary thing, a good 
thing in its place all will admit. It has a wonderful 
hold on the affections of men; it fills a large place 
in their thoughts. To get it men leave home and 
loved ones and brave the storms of the plains and 
climb dangerous mountain heights. They spend 
sleepless nights in uncomfortable railway coaches 
or crossing'the ocean to make money. They howl 
and scream and yell like madmen in the stock ex¬ 
changes, to make money or from fear that they may 
lose what they have. They build burglar and fire 
proof vaults to defeat the skill of the burglar and 
withstand the heat of the fire, to hold on to their 
money. Money—gold, silver, bank bills, govern¬ 
ment bonds—the earnings of a lifetime, a man can 
hold in the hand. Acres of houses, blocks of 
mortar and brick can be converted into a piece of 
paper six inches square. All the gold and silver 
and paper money in the United States can be 
stored in the vaults of the treasury at Washing¬ 
ton. This substance sets millions of mankind to 
work, starts all the railroad trains to running, 
keeps all the factories and foundries going, sends 
all the ships of all the world on their journeys, sets 
the wheels of commerce to revolving, brings goods 
and meat and meal into all the homes, builds all 
the colleges and churches, sends all the children 


244 THE mission of the church. 

to school, buys all the books, publishes all the pa¬ 
pers, cares for the orphans, and the poor and the 
helpless, harnesses horses, tills the soil, raises the 
crops, and keeps the world moving. Great is 
money! What shall we do with it? 

So many and such varied interests are involved 
that an offhand opinion as to where right always lies 
may miss the mark. Men must give account to 
God for the use they make of the money that 
comes into their hands. It is as much a gift, or 
more properly a loan, from the Lord as life itself. 
The Master has clearly stated the doctrine of the 
divine ownership of all things in the parable of the 
unjust steward. God is the owner; we are his 
stewards, intrusted with his property for a time. 
When we get through with it, it passes into the 
hands of others, on whom rests the responsibility 
of using it according to the will of the Owner. 
Men are as much bound to use their money reli¬ 
giously, for the glory of God, as they are to devote 
themselves to his service. To deny this statement 
is to affirm that men, under some circumstances, 
can be nonreligious, and that some acts which 
men do are invested with no moral character. 
“ Make to yourselves friends of [by means of] 
the mammon of unrighteousness”—that is, act 
religiously with it, use it to help the needy and to 


THE CHURCH AND MONET. 245 

bring the lost to salvation. “Ye ask, and re¬ 
ceive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may con¬ 
sume it upon your lusts.” The prayer for world¬ 
ly prosperity must be with the purpose to use it for 
the glory of God. Every dollar that men handle 
is a religious dollar. It cannot be otherwise as 
long as men are religiously related to God. The 
injunction of Paul is to the same effect: “ What¬ 
soever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name 
of the Lord Jesus.” 

Let us return to the parable of the unjust stew¬ 
ard. Rightly understood, it settles our relation to 
money. A man begins life with a small capital, 
not his, but God’s. By hard labor and good man¬ 
agement it increases to a large sum. It is now 
represented by a dozen dwellings, a half-dozen 
business houses, one thousand acres of land, and 
a half interest in a cotton factory. Whose prop¬ 
erty is it now? Still the Lord’s. He has had his 
wages all along, but the increase in the capital 
stock belongs to the original owner. Large mar¬ 
gin is allowed for the exercise of individual judg¬ 
ment and the guidance of conscience as to how 
much shall be consumed in meeting the necessities 
of the home; but to use the entire increase of the 
farm or the store or the profession for one’s own 
wants or luxuries, and to turn over no part of it to 


246 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

the Lord, is as great a wrong as for a tenant to 
pocket all the proceeds of the farm and leave the 
landowner with nothing. The Lord requires his 
own with usury—principal and interest. His rents 
must come. His interest must be paid. Men 
loan money at from seven to fifteen per cent. 
They stipulate that the interest must be paid 
promptly—annually. God lends his money to 
men. He exacted large interest from the He¬ 
brews—some writers affirm at least thirty per cent, 
of the income. Withholding it he called robbery. 
This is a dispensation not of the letter, but of the 
spirit. A generous soul is to “lay aside’’ now 
for the Lord as he has prospered him. It would 
be a sad commentary on the spirituality of this dis¬ 
pensation if, left to their own discretion, men 
should put into the treasury of the Lord less than 
one-tenth of what the Hebrews were required to 
give under a liberal dispensation. Has not this 
very thing come to pass? Examine the reports of 
all the Churches and benevolent associations, add 
to this what is contributed for private charities, 
and the whole amount is not one-tenth of one per 
cent, of the income of this country. Our schools 
are not sustained, our colleges are not endowed, 
our Churches are not supported, our missionary 
operations are hindered—why? The portion that 


THE CHURCH AND MONET. 247 

belongs to the Lord is kept back. Instead of fill¬ 
ing the coffers of the Church, it is expended for 
carnal gratification and worldly pleasure. Money 
can be had to build railroads, project towns, found 
factories, organize banks, erect mills, buy land, 
furnish parlors, rear opera houses—the times are 
rarely too hard for these enterprises; but God 
must be put off, his checks dishonored. His mes¬ 
sengers plead and beg and urge upon his professed 
followers the highest considerations. They ex¬ 
pound and enforce the teachings of the Scriptures 
upon the kingdom of the Master, its mission and 
its wants, they proclaim the demands of the Own¬ 
er of all things upon his people for his part of the 
income, his interest; and men, calling themselves 
Christians, put the Lord off with a small fraction 
of what justly belongs to him, while they endeavor 
to satify an uneasy conscience with the plea of a 
lack of ability. Much of the failure to pay the 
Lord what belongs to him of one’s income is due, 
doubtless, to a misunderstanding of the relations 
between God and his people. If the question 
were not so important, I would not treat it at such 
length. “ The love of money is the root of all 
evil.” Whoever, therefore, by tongue or pen, 
contributes to extracting this root where it already 
exists, or prepares the soil of the heart so that it 


248 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

cannot live there renders invaluable service to his 
race. 

Further to illustrate the subject, take this exam¬ 
ple: Two men, A and B, form a partnership busi¬ 
ness. A furnishes the capital, B runs the busi¬ 
ness. They agree to divide the profits equally 
between them. At the end of the year the in¬ 
come is $1,000. One-half belongs to A, the oth¬ 
er half to B. The whole of it is in B’s hands. 
As an honest man he turns over to A $500, his 
part of the proceeds of the business. This is not 
a debt which B owes A. He is simply turning 
over to A that which is his own, which B has no 
right to use or control in any way. Now suppose 
when A comes to B for a settlement, B says: “ I 
have no money; it has taken all the profits of the 
business to support my family.” What would be 
A’s reply? Something like this: “What right 
did you have to appropriate to the support of your 
family my money—money that did not belong to 
you? You are guilty of larceny after trust, and 
you shall answer to the courts for this crime.” 
We and God have formed a partnership. God 
furnishes air, earth, sunshine, rain, everything but 
the actual labor. God does not bind us to turn 
over to him a definite part of the proceeds of the 
business; he leaves large room for the exercise of 


THE CHURCH AND MONET. 249 

gratitude and generous liberality. He is more lib¬ 
eral with us than we are with one another. The 
renter who furnishes nothing but his labor and 
feeds himself pays to the landlord, who furnishes 
land, tools, and stock, and food for the stock, one- 
half of what the land produces. What is the dif¬ 
ference between the relation the renter sustains to 
the landlord and the relation we sustain to God? 
A certain part of the proceeds of the farm belongs 
to the renter and a certain part to the owner. Do 
we, who are in partnership with God, owe him 
nothing? When he furnishes much the larger 
portion of the agencies by which the corn and cot¬ 
ton are made, does no part of the corn and cotton 
belong to him? Isn’t there as much justice in 
bringing the charge of larceny after trust against 
him who refuses to turn over to God his part of 
the income of the business as there is in the case 
of B above, who used the $500 of A’s money on 
his own family ? Men pay one-fourth or one-third 
of the crop for rent, and are glad to get good land 
on those terms. Men pay from five to twenty per 
cent, for money. The lowest rate of interest in 
any State of the United States is five per cent. 
In every State there are statutes prescribing the 
rate that may be collected under contract. In 
some it is as high as twelve per cent. In many it 


250 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

is unlimited. These things are based on the 
principles of equity and justice. But when the 
Church, as the only divinely appointed teacher 
in morals, through its divinely constituted agents, 
tells men that a part of the proceeds of the year’s 
business belongs to God, the reply is: “ It is my 
own, and I’ll do what I please with it.” When 
the Church says it is right to deal honestly with 
God as with men, that it is not right for God to 
furnish rain and sunshine and air and soil and 
the laws of plant growth and health and food, and 
receive no part of the income of the partnership 
business, a shrug of the shoulders or a flat refus¬ 
al to recognize the justice of God’s claim is the 
reply. Or, at most, the average reply is: 44 1 
can’t spare any more.” Can’t turn over to God 
all that belongs to him? Can’t take that money 
out of your pocket, where it does not belong; and 
put it into the Lord’s treasury, where it does 
belong? Shame upon such conduct! Better 
starve, if that be the alternative, than to take from 
God that which belongs to him. 

This sort of writing provokes from many a smile 
of incredulity, a feeling of pity for those who en¬ 
tertain such views. If it were a matter of specu¬ 
lation, one might be open to the charge of fanati¬ 
cism; but when such views are founded in com- 


THE CHURCH AND MONET . 251 

mon honesty and backed by the Word of God, 
such feelings may give place to serious reflection. 
A very large portion of the Mosaic statutes con¬ 
cerns money or its equivalent—sheep and cows 
and corn and wheat are money nowadays; and 
if the Hebrews had raised cotton and ginned and 
packed it, many a bale, as the Lord’s part, would 
have found its way into his warehouse. For vio¬ 
lating these statutes, what was the result? “ Ye 
are cursed with a curse.” In what did it consist? 
The fruits of their ground had been destroyed 
and the vine had cast its fruit before the season. 
Droughts, floods, and cyclones come, crops are 
burned up or washed away, business houses laid 
waste, homes leveled with the ground, the accu¬ 
mulations of years scattered in an hour. Men 
stand and gaze upon such wreckage in amaze¬ 
ment and despair. They rarely think of the con¬ 
nection between such things and a jealous God 
who owns and governs all things. God, being 
the owner, has the right to destroy property if he 
chooses to do so; especially if those who have 
charge of his property are cheating him out of his 
part of the income; more especially if they are 
using it in such a way as to put in jeopardy their 
eternal interests. Not long ago, a gentleman, be¬ 
yond three score and ten, said to me: 44 When 


252 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

the war came, I was getting rich and learning to 
love money. My property was swept away and I 
was left with nothing but my land and a good 
house. Now I thank God for poverty.” “If 
riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” 
God may have to employ heroic measures to dis¬ 
lodge the enemy and rescue the soul. Sin is in¬ 
trenching itself in the dens and alleys of our cit¬ 
ies. Here children are born into the world to 
grow up in an atmosphere reeking with sin. Men 
and women are standing ready with the gospel of 
light and salvation to go into these dark places. 
They only ask to be taken care of—a humble liv¬ 
ing. But the money is wanting. It is God’s 
money, in the hands of those who have no right to 
use it. Every steamship that comes from the land 
of heathen darkness brings a heartrending plea 
for help. Multiplied millions are yet unsaved. 
Doors stand wide open, mutely appealing for the 
light of the gospel. Men and women, called of 
God, beg to be sent out as missionaries of the 
cross. But their cry falls upon leaden ears. 
The money is lacking. It is the Lord’s money, 
and they who have it will not turn it loose. Not 
the rich only, but all classes of men are guilty of 
keeping back from the Lord that which belongs 
to him. How long will the Owner of all the 


THE CHURCH AND MONET. 


2 53 


money and all the property in this world bear with 
a people who refuse to turn over to him that which 
belongs to him? God will have his own. He 
who will not, as the steward of the Lord, deal 
honestly with him may expect to be turned out of 
his stewardship. * 

This question has assumed a form within recent 
years which the Church cannot ignore. Corpo¬ 
rations have become fabulously rifch. Their pow¬ 
er to control commerce and regulate prices is 
measured by the millions of money which they 
possess. Spurred on by the greed for gain, cap¬ 
ital combines to put up or put down prices, re¬ 
gardless of the law of supply and demand. When 
honest labor is underpaid and grim want enters 
the home of the poor man, it is not surprising that 
labor unites against capital to secure its just rights. 
President Bascom, a learned writer on political 
science, says: “In this country, preeminently 
during the last twenty years, society has lost its 
balance by the undue influence of capital. No 
kind of combination has been too broad, too mis¬ 
chievous, too unscrupulous, too much of the na¬ 
ture of a monopoly, to be impossible to capital. 
Capital has run riot under social, civic, and eco¬ 
nomical law. The success of capital in the pres¬ 
ent struggle would mean a still further victory of 


254 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

centralized power and narrow self-interest over 
distributed powers and the interest of the widest 
of all classes, the working classes. Whoever has 
the right to rebuke the workmen for combination, 
or thwart them in an unhesitating pursuit of their 
own interest, or to blame them for oversight of 
the general welfare, it is not the capitalist. The 
one dangerous center at which all power has been 
rapidly accumulating is that of the money man¬ 
ager. A victory at this point, unless he who wins 
it is clothed in a garment of threefold righteous¬ 
ness, must be looked upon with profound appre¬ 
hension.” 

It is at this point that the voice of the Church 
must be heard calling upon all parties to look at 
the whole question between labor and capital 
from the standpoint of the moral law. Since the 
recent labor strikes in Pennsylvania and other 
States the whole ground of the relation between 
capital and labor has been gone over by political 
economists and others. On one side it has been 
stoutly maintained that capital is a law unto itself, 
fixing its own price for the labor it employs. On 
the other hand, the friends of labor contend that 
labor has the right to say what it is worth. How 
can these conflicting claims be adjusted? That 
they must be adjusted anyone can see at a glance. 


THE CHURCH AND MONET 255 

Capital and labor are so related that they are mu¬ 
tually dependent one upon the other. Unem¬ 
ployed capital is worthless capital; unemployed 
labor is unproductive labor. These two great 
forces, that together are the cause of all our mate¬ 
rial prosperity, must work in harmony. Is there 
no way to make them allies? Must they be for¬ 
ever watching one another, fearing that each is 
seeking the advantage of the other? 

On the commercial side a simple statement of 
the case would be about this: Labor and capital 
are partners in business; each contributes to the 
common product. What part of the income be¬ 
longs to capital and what part to labor is a matter 
that the parties to the compact must settle between 
themselves, having due regard for the moral rights 
involved. Unless each recognizes the rights of 
the other and the binding force of the moral law 
governing both, nothing will be permanently set¬ 
tled. Changed conditions will make modifications 
in the provisions of the contract necessary. Ar¬ 
bitrarily to assume the right, on short notice or 
without notice, to annul the agreement existing 
between two parties is the worst sort of despot¬ 
ism. For capital to announce to labor that the 
contract between them is no longer in force is to 
assume the right to decide what shall be the agree- 


256 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

ment between itself and labor, and therefore to 
control labor. For labor to say what its own 
wages shall be is to determine what pay capital 
shall have, whether much or little or none. There 
may be an element of justice in an arbitrary scale 
of prices for labor, announced by a moneyed cor¬ 
poration. There may be a degree of righteous¬ 
ness in a movement on the part of labor that 
strikes for higher wages; but as a rule, in either 
case the evidence of selfishness and a total disre¬ 
gard for the rights of the other party robs it of all 
claim to the sympathy of right-thinking people. 

If capital says to labor, “ I think you are getting 
too much pay for your work;” or labor says to 
capital, “You are better paid than I am,” there 
is a fair and honorable way to settle all such dif¬ 
ferences. How? By conference. Let repre¬ 
sentatives from both sides meet on the plane of 
the Sermon on the Mount, with the law of love 
illuminating all minds and touching all hearts, and 
take counsel together.* If no satisfactory con- 

* Since the above was written I find the following in the 
secular press. As it forcibly illustrates the view in the text, I 
insert it here: “Three engineers were summarily discharged 
from the Reading railroad system, without any good reason, 
as their comrades thought, and in a way that seemed to them a 
settled purpose to break up the unions. A conference was pro¬ 
posed, to which President McLeod objected. Chief Arthur, of 



THE CHURCH AND MONET. 


2 57 


elusion is reached, there is a way left that never 
fails with good men: arbitration. This is right, 
this is fair, this is scriptural. Whether the ques¬ 
tion to be settled involves the interest of ten thou¬ 
sand people or of but two men, the principle is 
the same. No rule in political economy that takes 
no account of the moral law and its demands is 
worthy the name. When this law has full sway, 
strikes will be impossible, and corners for extort¬ 
ing exorbitant prices from consumers will be un¬ 
known. 

To conclude on this point. The late Dr. Duff 
once said that the world would be converted to 
Christ as soon as rich men gave their money as 
freely for the extension of the gospel as they 
spend it for the luxuries of their own homes. Ev¬ 
idently that time has not yet come. Men have 
not yet learned the great fact that they are only 
stewards of the money which has been placed in 


the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, was called. Cour¬ 
teously but very firmly a conference was requested, and in the 
course of a short interview the whole trouble was satisfactorily 
settled. It was shown to the satisfaction of President McLeod 
that one of the dismissals was due to ignorance of certain rules 
on the part of the employee, and he was promptly reinstated. 
On the other hand, it appeared that the other two men had de¬ 
liberately violated a written agreement, and the Brotherhood 
waived its claim for them without hesitancy. 

17 



258 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

their hands, and that they are to use it for the re¬ 
demption of the race. Let the barriers of selfish¬ 
ness be broken down, and the true spirit of Christ, 
which is the spirit of self-sacrifice, get fully into 
the hearts and lives of Christian people; and the 
property which the layman consecrates with him¬ 
self to the Lord when he assumes the vows of 
Church membership will be bestowed as freely 
and as generously for the salvation of the world as 
the missionary of the cross devotes all his powers 
of mind and soul and body to bringing the hea¬ 
then to Christ. What is there in the teachings of 
the Book to justify the popular doctrine that de¬ 
mands of the minister that he shall be wholly ded¬ 
icated to the service of the Lord, and allows his 
brother, who happens to be a layman, to give but 
little of his service and a fraction of his income to 
the Church? Little wonder that while the gov¬ 
ernments of Europe in times of peace support 16,- 
000,000 soldiers at a cost of $900,000,000 per 
annum, the Captain of our salvation can muster 
only 30,000 soldiers at a cost of $10,000,000 an¬ 
nually, to wage eternal war upon the kingdom of 
darkness in heathen lands. 

One of the saddest effects of increasing riches, 
even among the most devout, is that liberality de¬ 
creases. Five years ago a leading missionary 


THE CHURCH AND MONET . 259 

magazine of Great Britain published a table of 
statistics showing that the contributions of the 
rich for Missions were all out of proportion to 
those in moderate circumstances, while the 
amounts contributed by the aristocracy were 
positively disgraceful. In this country, while 
here and there a wealthy Christian gives his thou¬ 
sands for Church purposes, the bulk of the funds 
of the Church comes from those in the humbler 
walks of life. Michael Angelo has left us an ex¬ 
ample which for beauty and Christlikeness is 
worthy of our imitation. “When called to sur¬ 
mount St. Peter’s with that marvelous dome that 
has already been the admiration of centuries, he 
was raised to an enthusiasm which amounted to a 
religious devotion.” He refused all compensa¬ 
tion, and resolved that this last crowning work of 
a long, noble life should be wholly consecrated to 
Christ. All over this land there are men and 
women of large fortunes who can devote their en¬ 
tire income above a support to the service of the 
Church. I dare affirm that in many cases, pos¬ 
sibly in the large majority, not one dollar less is 
the Lord’s part. Every dollar of his that is with¬ 
held from him is robbery. 

The Church must speak plainly, boldly, and 
with authority, not because the money is needed 


26 o 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


to carry on its operations, but because men who 
have it, whether much or little, cannot serve God 
and get to heaven as long as they hold on to it. 
There is no affection so tenacious as the love of 
money; there is no cause so prolific of evil; there 
is no yoke so galling; there is no power so hard 
to break; there is no disease so difficult to treat 
and conquer. The Church has no enemy more 
subtle, no foe more deadly, than the god of 
money enthroned in the hearts of men. Sancti¬ 
fied by grace, baptized with the Spirit of Christ, 
there is no friend more faithful, no ally more true, 
no servant more ready. The man who finds him¬ 
self drifting toward the whirlpool of mammonism 
will find a sure and safe anchor in obeying prompt¬ 
ly the injunction of St. Paul: “Upon the first 
day of the week let every one of you lay by him 
in store as God hath prospered him. ,, Give God 
what belongs to him. “ Honor the Lord with thy 
substance and with the first fruits of all thine in¬ 
crease.“If ye have not been faithful in the 
unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your 
trust the true riches? ” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


fijlHE Church is composed of two classes— 
^ preachers and laymen. In many respects 
the distinction between preachers and laymen is a 
radical one, and vital to the integrity and perpe¬ 
tuity of the Church. No one can read the cata¬ 
logue of apostles and others which Paul gives in 
Ephesians iv. n, 12, to say nothing of the many 
places where he refers to his own office and work 
as a minister of the gospel, without the conviction 
that the preacher is set apart from the body of the 
Church for a specific work. In a previous chap¬ 
ter I have endeavored to show that the preacher is 
called by divine authority to be the expounder of 
the word and a teacher*of the people. The serv¬ 
ice for the ordination of elders in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, takes this view. Ad¬ 
dressing the candidates for ordination, the Bishop 
says: “ We exhort you, in the name of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, that you have in remembrance into 
how high a dignity and to how weighty an office 
you are called—that is to say, to be messengers, 

watchmen, and stewards of the Lord; to teach 

( 261 ) 


262 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


and to premonish, to feed and provide for the 
Lord’s family. We have good hope that you have 
clearly determined, by God’s grace, to give your¬ 
selves wholly to this office, whereunto it hath 
pleased God to call you; so that, as much as lieth 
in you, you will give yourselves wholly to this one 
thing, and draw all your cares and studies this 
way . . . that by daily reading and weighing 

of the Scriptures, ye may wax riper and stronger 
in your ministry.” 

This question, among others, is asked: “Are 
you determined out of the said Scriptures to in¬ 
struct the people committed to your charge, and 
to teach nothing, as required of necessity to eter¬ 
nal salvation, but that which you shall be per¬ 
suaded may be concluded and proved by the 
Scriptures?” The following prayer also is of¬ 
fered: “Almighty God and Heavenly Father, 
who, of thine infinite love and goodness-toward 
us, hast given to us thine only and most dearly be¬ 
loved Son, Jesus Christ, to be our Redeemer, and 
the author of everlasting life, who . . . sent 

abroad into the world his apostles, prophets, evan¬ 
gelists, doctors, and pastors; by whose labor and 
ministry he gathered together a greater flock in 
all parts of the world: . . . for these so great 

benefits of thy goodness, and for that thou hast 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 263 

vouchsafed to call these thy servants here present 
to the same office and ministry appointed for the 
salvation of mankind, we render unto thee most 
hearty thanks.’’ After which the Bishop says: 
“The Lord pour upon thee the Holy Ghost for 
the office and work of an elder in the Church of 
God now committed unto thee by the imposition 
of our hands. And be thou a faithful dispenser 
of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments: 
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost.” And this also: “Take thou 
authority to preach the word of God, and to ad¬ 
minister the sacraments in the congregation.” 

These prayers and exhortations are based upon 
the teaching of the Bible. When Paul was on 
his way to Jerusalem, while stopping at Miletus, 
he sent for the elders of the church at Ephesus, 
and delivered to them this exhortation: “Take 
heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the 
flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made 
you overseers, to feed the church of God, which 
he hath purchased with his own blood.” (Acts 
xx. 28.) In his last letter to Timothy, and just 
before he laid down his pen forever, he wrote 
these words: “I charge thee therefore before 
God and the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . preach 

the word; be instant in season, out of season; 


264 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering 
and doctrine.” (2 Tim. iv. 1, 2.) These quo¬ 
tations are sufficient to establish the point that 
there is a difference between the preacher and the 
layman. The preacher’s duty is that of a shep¬ 
herd, to “feed the flock,” to “reprove,” “re¬ 
buke,” “admonish,” “teach” the people. This, 
let it be remembered, is no usurpation of author¬ 
ity, but it is the divine arrangement. As an in¬ 
tegral part of the Church, therefore, I am to dis¬ 
cuss what sort of man the preacher must be. 

Paul tells Timothy to be “ an example of the 
believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in 
spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give at¬ 
tendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. 
Neglect not the gift that is in thee. . . . Med¬ 

itate upon these things; give thyself wholly to 
them. . . . Take heed unto thyself, and unto 

the doctrine;” to “flee these things [striving to 
be rich]; and follow after righteousness, godli¬ 
ness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the 
good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life;” and 
to “ keep that which is committed to thy trust, 
avoiding profane and vain babblings, and opposi¬ 
tions of science falsely so-called.” He exhorts 
him to “hold fast the form of sound words;” to 
“ endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus 


THE CHURCH ITSELF . 265 

Christ;” to “ study to show thyself approved unto 
God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, 
rightly dividing the word of truth;” to “follow 
righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them 
that call on the Lord out of a pure heart;” to 
“watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the 
work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy 
ministry.” 

A man called of God to the work of the minis¬ 
try has no time for anything else. He solemnly 
vows to give himself wholly to this work. “ They 
that preach the gospel shall live of the gospel.” 
They are to look for a support to those whom 
they serve. Their hands are full. The welfare 
of the Church, the multiplied interests he is 
charged with, and the salvation of souls occupy 
all the thoughts of a consecrated preacher. This 
is more particularly the case in these days when 
every Church has its societies for the children, 
for the young people, and for the women, its Sun¬ 
day School Teachers’ Associations, and its meet¬ 
ings for official boards, to say nothing of the nu¬ 
merous organizations in every community for re¬ 
forming the criminals and rescuing the fallen. 
Of most of these the pastor must take general 
oversight; in many of them he is expected to take 
an active part. All of them he must indorse by 


266 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

at least being present at their meetings. All these 
things take time—much more time than one man 
has at his disposal, after preparing for the pulpit 
and attending to the stated duties of the pastorate. 
If there is any man who is bound by his con¬ 
science and by the necessities of his calling to be 
a man of one work, that man is the modern pas¬ 
tor. To engage in other lines of business, wheth¬ 
er by compulsion or by choice, is to leave some 
duty undone. 

The tribe of Levy was to have no inheritance 
among the Israelites. They that preach the gos¬ 
pel are to live of the gospel. What a pity that 
ministers and people have not always perceived 
the wisdom of this arrangement. Students and 
teachers of morals, expounders of spiritual truths 
who descend to the level of money seeking and of 
dealing in stocks and bonds and real estate, when 
they would rise and carry their congregations 
with them, as they rise, to the heights of divine re¬ 
alities, find, to their sorrow, themselves weighted 
down with things material and earthly. As well 
expect the Son of Mary to engage in the business 
of tax gathering and be at the same time the self- 
sacrificing Saviour of the world, as to expect a 
preacher whose mind is engrossed with earthly 
matters during the week to be a leader and a 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


267 


teacher of spiritual things on Sunday. There are 
no truths so delicate and difficult of adjustment to 
human needs as spiritual truths. There are no 
realities so retiring in the presence of a lack of 
sympathy, so closed to that which is unlike them, 
yet at the same time yielding readily to honest in¬ 
vestigation, as spiritual realities. Truth can be 
found by him whose soul is in the search. Men 
of business, honest, conscientious, Christian men, 
who are tied down to the humdrum life of a mer¬ 
chant or a lawyer or a farmer, hail the coming of 
the Sabbath not alone because of the rest which 
it brings from the work and worry of the week, 
but for the opportunity it furnishes to feed the soul 
on spiritual truths which the faithful minister has 
prepared during the week. What a disappoint¬ 
ment if, standing before him is a man who, like 
himself, has been engaged in counting interest or 
booming a suburban town during the week. In 
vain the secular preacher works the pumps. The 
well is deep and dry. There is a painful lack of 
spirituality in the preacher, which no gifts can 
atone for. 

What an inspiring spectacle to see a class of 
noble, consecrated, young men, having been ad¬ 
mitted on trial into the ranks of the itinerancy, 
starting with glad yet trembling hearts to their first 


268 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

appointments. One purpose—a sublime one—fills 
and dominates every one of these youthful heralds 
of the cross: the opportunity to preach the gos¬ 
pel to dying men. The bare suggestion that some 
day they will be turning the listening ear to the 
tempter as he makes the flattering offer of a town 
lot or a comfortable cottage and an income from 
rent rolls to supplement the meager salary—the 
suggestion that he will listen for a moment to such 
a proposition is a wicked intrusion into the sanctu¬ 
ary of his consecrated spirit. “ Is thy servant a 
dog, that he should do this great thing?” Look 
at the zeal, the fervor of the young soldier. See 
how he spares not himself, his strength, nor his 
health. Hear him as he pleads for souls; his 
words are arrows winged with earnestness of 
faith. Is it any wonder that hearts are moved, 
that men are saved, that the powers of darkness 
are shaken, Christ’s kingdom established, and 
“hell’s o’erthrown?” They have no thought of 
self or support. The promise is that they shall 
receive a living; they expect that, and care for 
naught else beside. 

In the run of years in some cases—not many, 
thank God !—zeal declines and success diminishes. 
Why this change? The infirmities of age and the 
sobering down of years will not give a satisfactory 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


answer. There are men among us whose zeal 
and devotion and spiritual power and usefulness 
increase with the years. What is the cause of this 
difference? Paul, then aged and a prisoner at 
Rome, “ expounded and testified the kingdom of 
God . . . from morning till evening.’’ Is the 

mind partly taken up with serving tables, looking 
after earthly possessions, looking after more fa¬ 
vorable investments that promise larger and swift¬ 
er returns? These are the things that eat their 
way like a cancer to the very heart of a preacher’s 
spirituality. Like other men, a preacher, unless 
he is careful to keep beyond the reach of such in¬ 
firmities, will be led into speculative schemes that 
run men wild with the expectation of earthly for¬ 
tunes. If the ministry ever become rich, there will 
be no hand to put up a barrier to keep corruption 
out of the Church. The times demand a ministry 
absolutely severed from the world with all of its 
entanglements. Unless men, called of God to this 
holy office, are satisfied to be poor, they must con¬ 
tent themselves with being powerless. 

The preacher’s relation to money—whether he 
has much or little, loves it or not—will have much 
to do with his attitude toward sin, whether he is 
bold and fearless in attacking it or cringing and 
cowardly in its presence. The true preacher has 


270 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

but one master, even the Lord. Him he fears, 
and him he honors and serves. As he is set for a 
teacher and guide in morals, so he is on the alert 
to warn his people of every kind of evil. “ O son 
of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house 
of Israel: therefore, thou shalt hear the word at 
my mouth, and warn them from me: ... if 
thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his 
way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but 
his blood will I require at thine hand.” (Ezek. 
xxxiii. 7, 8.) His commission is from his Lord, 
and what he has heard in secret that he is bound 
to proclaim upon the house tops. Whether his 
message is agreeable or otherwise is not the ques¬ 
tion. The chances are that it will be distasteful to a 
worldly, godless people. The greater the necessity 
for its faithful proclamation. The temptation “ to 
skip the hard places ” in the “ law of the Lord,” 
and speak soft words that put guilty consciences 
to sleep, is hard to resist where the motive is the 
praise that comes from men rather than the honor 
that comes from above. If the desire for gain or 
the love of applause win the day, the sooner the 
preacher vacates his pulpit the better it will be for 
the truth and for that people. Only an unscrupu¬ 
lous doctor will tell a patient dying with consump¬ 
tion that he has no consumption. Only a weak 


THE CHURCH ITSELF, 271 

one will decline to tell his friend that he has a fatal 
malady, for fear of offending him. Apologizing 
for sin leads to excusing it, and excusing it to de¬ 
fending it. He who consents, for whatever cause, 
to call sin an indiscretion will soon have no word 
of condemnation for it. Dr. Cunningham Geikie 
says truthfully: “ To reach the masses, the religion 
of pew, pulpit, and Bishop’s throne must be real. 
What good is it to talk of bringing in millions by 
make-believe? and what else is it than make-be¬ 
lieve on a large scale when well to do sinners have 
bows and smiles from parsons in private, and are 
not troubled by any pulpit allusions to their short¬ 
comings, while the air is shrill with denunciations 
of poor gutter offenders? Call the devil by name 
wherever you find him—in Wall Street on the 
Stock Exchange, in ‘ syndicates ’ and 4 corners,’ 
in death trap houses for the poor, in the utter 
want of principle in party politics, in the thousand 
forms in which he masquerades in our midst. 
Some prophet who fears nobody but God must rise; 
some one with the great heart of Jesus Christ, who 
bearded high priest, rabbi, and any one found do¬ 
ing wrong, and exposed hypocrisy however high 
placed, and was the friend of publicans and sin¬ 
ners, pointing them, indeed, to the Father above, 
but at the same time himself bearing their infirmi- 


272 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

ties, and brightening their dark lot by self-sacri¬ 
fice for their good.” 

Every preacher works under a system to whose 
doctrines and polity he has solemnly subscribed. 
Generally these doctrines and polity are not of 
doubtful interpretation. Prudently, but lovingly 
and firmly he is under the bonds of his ordination 
vow to defend the creed of his Church. That is 
not putting it strong enough. As a conscientious 
man he did not subscribe to what he did not be¬ 
lieve. As an honest man, believing that the deliv¬ 
erances of his Church are a correct interpretation 
of the word of God, he preaches what his Church 
teaches. If he should find himself out of agree¬ 
ment with his Church as to any doctrinal teaching, 
there is but one thing for him to do: retire from 
the ministry of that Church. He was ordained by 
that Church and set apart for the purpose of being 
at least a faithful representative of her belief; and 
to use her pulpits to preach dogmas repudiated by 
her system of doctrines is dishonest, and such con¬ 
duct ought to subject the offender to the condem¬ 
nation of all Christian people. That such disrep¬ 
utable things have been done by men of splendid 
abilities is additional cause for censure. 

Besides its creed—a collection of doctrines— 
every Church has its code of ethics, its rules for 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 273 

forming and governing conduct. These rules are 
an interpretation of the mind of the Spirit. They 
are based on what the Bible is supposed to teach. 
Whether they have sufficient foundation in the 
Word of God is not a question with the preacher 
who said he believed they have, and who, in a sol¬ 
emn hour, promised to observe and teach them. 
All who become members of a Church affirm their 
belief in the agreement of these rules with the spir¬ 
it of the Scriptures, and promise to keep them. 
All—preacher and people—believe that by the 
faithful observance of these rules spiritual life is 
promoted. It is certain that a Church prospers in 
proportion as the rules touching moral conduct 
are faithfully kept. The pressure from the world, 
especially in cities, to put such a construction upon 
these deliverances of the Church as practically 
robs them of their meaning and force is so heavy 
that the Church is in danger of being dominated 
by a spirit of worldliness which is utterly at war 
with spirituality. To yield to this pressure is cow¬ 
ardly; worse, it is treacherous and wicked. If a 
man, believing that certain practices were wrong 
when he was set apart to the work of the ministry, 
holds his peace through fear of public opinion, he 
is unworthy of confidence. If he opens not his 
mouth because he has changed his opinion, he is 
18 


274 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

unworthy of confidence. In either case he de¬ 
serves to be ejected from his sacred calling. The 
evil of such a course is very great. He is a lead¬ 
er and a teacher in the Church—a teacher, mark 
you, of what that particular Church authorizes 
him to teach, not of some private notions he may 
entertain. His people, young and old, and all the 
people expect him to have the honesty and the 
manhood to preach the doctrines of his Church. 
To do otherwise is to mislead the flock over whom 
he is overseer. To give them, or any number of 
them, false views of life is to do them a hurt which 
nothing will cure. “ The church is to be direct¬ 
ed and handled by the preacher. He is put there 
for that purpose. The church may be asleep, 
may be in bondage, may be misguided. The 
preacher is the agent by which the sleep and the 
bondage are to be broken, and the church made to 
feel its responsibilities and meet them. The 
preacher is to the church what the general is to 
the army.” He directs its movements, prepares 
it for the fight, and leads it to victory. 

Intimate knowledge of spiritual things, a keen 
perception of what is vicious, a soul that holds com¬ 
munion with invisible realities, a clean, spotless 
life, an unquestioning faith in the righteousness of 
the cause for which the Church stands, and an 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


2 75 


abiding conviction that an infraction of the moral 
law is a sin and hurtful to moral character—these 
are the qualifications that arm a preacher with the 
courage to defend the right and oppose the wrong. 
The times need such men. Already the air is full 
of rumors that ought to startle the friends of hon¬ 
esty and orthodoxy. Rev. So-and-So announces 
from his pulpit that certain forms of dancing are al¬ 
lowable. The pastor of another Church lets the 
world know that he has abandoned all forms of 
discipline in cases of dancing and the like. One 
says that he believes in the annihilation of the 
wicked; another affirms his belief in a probation 
after death. These reverend gentlemen simply 
teach what their respective Churches reject. Ad¬ 
mitting, for the sake of the argument, that they are 
correct in their views, the inconsistency of their 
position cannot be defended. But doctrine and 
discipline have been the strong skeleton on which 
the Church has built its life. The chances are 
about as one thousand to one that the Church is 
right in its teachings and the preacher wrong. 
Never in the history of the world was there great¬ 
er need of men in the pulpit who have faith in the 
doctrinal and ethical teachings of the Churches, 
the courage to proclaim them, and the fidelity and 
manhood to require perfect conformity to them in 


27 6 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

heart and life. Above all, the preacher must 
preach “ Christ, the power of God, and the wis¬ 
dom of God.” Mr. Wesley said he dared not 
preach fine sermons. He says of his sermons: 
“ Nothing here appears in an elaborate, elegant, 
or oratorical dress. I design plain truth for plain 
people.” Robert Hall said in his later ministry: 
“ My strain of preaching is considerably altered; 
much less elegant, but more intended for convic¬ 
tion, for awakening the conscience, and carrying 
home truths with power to the heart.” Wesley, 
Luther, Knox, Edwards, and Whitefield won their 
greatest victories for the gospel when they were 
the subjects of persecution. A great pulpit orator, 
toward the close of his life, said: “ If any saving 
fruit has been reaped from my ministry, it has been 
almost entirely among the middle and lower 
classes.” The plain, direct, honest preaching of 
the truth is God’s hammer for breaking the hard¬ 
est hearts. Its power to subdue and melt and win 
is not equaled by the flights of splendid oratory 
or the trappings of gorgeous rhetoric. The truth, 
the truth will make men free. 

The Laymen. 

The most strategic standpoint from which to 
study the Church is its work in the world. It is 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 277 

twofold. It is to be (1) the representative of 
Christ, and (2) to save the world. In previous 
chapters I have endeavored to show what the 
Christ is whom the Church is to represent, and 
what that salvation is which the Church is to 
bring to the world. My purpose now is to show 
what the Church must be to accomplish these 
grand results. If the Church is to be the light of 
the world, it must itself be full of light; if it is to 
save the world from sin, it must not only be filled 
with saving power, but must itself be saved. 

The Church is a company of men and women, 
all of whom have been converted, born of the 
Spirit, made anew in Christ Jesus. It is the 
bride of Christ, having on the spotless robe of 
righteousness, possessing the nature and doing 
the will of her divine Husband. Her 44 conversa¬ 
tion is in heaven.’’ These redeemed ones have 
their 44 affections set on things above, not on 
things on the earth;” they 44 seek those things 
which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right 
hand of God;” they are 44 dead,” and their 44 life 
is hid with Christ in God;” they 44 walk not after 
the flesh, but after the Spirit;” and 44 the Spirit 
beareth witness” to their spirits that they are 
44 the children of God,” 44 heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Jesus Christ;” while the outward man 


278 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 

is perishing, they are assured that “ the inner 
man is renewed day by day;” and “though 
the earthly house of this tabernacle were dis¬ 
solved,” they have “a building of God, a house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 
Living in the world, they are not of the world. , 
“A true Christian is the representative of Christ 
in the world, the only embodiment of gospel 
teaching and influence that is presented in human 
society. How vitally important then is it that 
those of us who profess and call ourselves Chris¬ 
tians should make our Christianity attractive! 
Multitudes of people know very little and think 
very little about the Lord Jesus; nearly all the 
idea they get of religion is what they see in those 
who profess it, and their eyes are as sharp as 
those of a lynx to discover whether their neighbor 
is one whit the better for religion.” 

Now it is this kind of a life which the Church is 
to present to the world. While the Church stands 
as an advocate of the truth as a saving power, it 
must furnish in itself the best illustration of the 
power of the truth to save. The human mind 
does not take kindly to abstractions. The truth, 
however clearly and beautifully presented as a 
theory, has little magnetism to attract or power to 
compel; it must be put into concrete form, incar- 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 279 

nated in human experience. Steam, in treatises 
on its tremendous power, excites no interest, 
arouses no enthusiasm. The only moving con¬ 
ception of it as a force is a magnificent engine 
sweeping along the rails at the rate of thirty miles 
an hour, pulling one thousand tons of freight. 
Proof that the truth saves, that religion is a reali¬ 
ty, a supernatural force that regulates the life and 
fills the soul with heavenly joy, that brings peace 
and comfort in trouble and sorrow, is what the 
world demands. Nor will it be satisfied with a 
profession that is followed by a life which differs 
in no essential particular from its own. The 
Church professes to be living for others, not for 
itself. The world demands the proof. It pro¬ 
fesses to be seeking heavenly, not earthly riches 
the world calls for the evidence. It professes to 
have the mind that was in Christ, “ who made 
himself of no reputation,” who came to earth 
“not to be ministered unto, but to minister’ 
the world asks for the life that answers to this 
profession. It professes to be filled with the Spir¬ 
it—the world demands to see the “fruits of the 
Spirit.” Is this an unjust, an unreasonable de¬ 
mand? Not only does the Church make this pro¬ 
fession; its business is to teach these things to the 
world. He who can back every claim with the 


280 the mission of the church. 

proof, who can buttress every doctrine with a life, 
cannot fall. When Christ said to the sick of the 
palsy, “ Thy sins be forgiven thee,” the scribes 
objected. He met their objections by furnishing 
the proof of his divinity. He wrought a miracle 
before their eyes. This was evidence that he had 
power to forgive sins. 

Another thing must not be overlooked: If a 
Church cannot exist without a creed, neither can 
its members make a successful fight against sin 
unless they are loyal to the doctrines and econ¬ 
omy of that Church. If a preacher has no right 
to minister at the altars of a Church whose doc¬ 
trines he does not indorse and whose polity he is 
no longer in harmony with, neither can a layman 
antagonize the teachings or oppose the rules of 
the Church to which he belongs. The conditions 
of membership in all the evangelical Churches are 
much the same. They all require renunciation of 
the flesh and the world so as not to follow or be 
led by them; they demand a promise to support 
the institutions and be subject to the discipline of 
the Church. These conditions belong, as is be¬ 
lieved, to membership in the spiritual Church of 
Christ. Now, to remain in a Church after one 
finds himself, from whatever cause, out of har¬ 
mony with its teachings and practices, and under- 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


28 


take to bring the teachings of the pulpit and the 
lives of the people to confirm to his views, is inex¬ 
cusable treachery. That Church was built and 
dedicated for the purpose of teaching certain doc¬ 
trines which belong to heart and life. While per¬ 
fect agreement in doctrine is not to be expected, 
to oppose what any Church teaches while in its 
communion is dishonest. The world is large, and 
the chances are that the place for all such is out¬ 
side the communion of all the Churches. The in¬ 
fluence of the Church is greatly weakened by at¬ 
tacks upon it from within. After all, a prayerful 
examination of what the Church teaches will, in 
most cases, lead the inquirer to the conclusion 
that the trouble is in his heart. For accomplish¬ 
ing its work the Church must be united. Essen¬ 
tial agreement as to the saving doctrines of the 
Bible and their effect upon the life will present an 
argument to the world that it cannot resist. If 
there is division here, the world is left in doubt as 
to what religion is designed to do. Moreover, its 
power to save men and bring the world to Christ 
is weakened in proportion to the differences that 
exist touching the cardinal doctrines of the Bible. 

The world is all wrong in its estimate of things. 
With it the material is the principal thing. Visible 
things, tangible things, things that can be handled 


282 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

are the real and the valuable, while the invisible 
things are pushed into the background as of little 
worth. The god of this world is to the world a 
real god. It is the duty of the Church to prove to 
the world that the god it worships is an idol, that 
such service reacts upon the worshipers, producing 
in them the same life and spirit, creating desires 
that it cannot satisfy, and arousing hopes that will 
never be realized. By a life that corresponds with 
its teaching the Church must furnish indubitable 
proof that not the material, but the immaterial, 
not the visible, but the invisible can feed the soul 
and supply that which satisfies the desires and 
longings of the heart. It says that religion and 
the hope of heaven are so valuable that to give 
these for the whole world would be a poor ex¬ 
change. The world demands the proof. How can 
it be furnished? Money is of small value to the 
invalid by the side of health. Gold has no glitter 
for the man that is starving. A millionaire would 
willingly part with his vast fortune if that would 
bring him relief from suffering. I know of no 
better way for one to show his estimate of religion 
than by putting his estimate of money in the 
other side of the scales. There is a kind of fish 
which resembles sea grass. It hides itself in the 
midst of marine vegetation. Below is the head, 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


2S3 


looking like the bulb; and above is the body and 
tail, looking like the blade of grass. The ocean 
currents sway fish and grass alike, and so the lit¬ 
tle fish escapes being devoured by its enemies. 
It swims along, and one can hardly tell where fish 
ends and grass begins. Now there are many 
Christians whose lives are so interwoven with the 
world that they can scarcely be distinguished. 
Worldly maxims move them pretty much as men 
of the world are moved. A Church that presents 
this kind of life to the world need have no fear of 
persecution; nor will the world be in a hurry to 
exchange its own life for that which the Church 
offers. 

If “ religion is the chief concern of mortals here 
below,” if saving men from sin is the most mo¬ 
mentous business, if invisible possessions are the 
most valuable, and the only possessions that en¬ 
dure forever (all of which the Church believes and 
teaches), the world demands that the Church shall 
show its estimate of spiritual things by using all 
other possessions as means for procuring these. 
If the love of money is wrong, the Church must 
show the world that it is wrong by not loving it. 
If a self-seeking, pleasure-hunting, mammon-wor¬ 
shiping spirit is wrong, the Church must furnish 
the proof in its life. If self-sacrifice lies at the 


284 THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 

root of Christianity, and is the one thing that likens 
Christians to their Lord, the Church is called 
upon to give evidence of this fact by turning loose 
her money to send the blessings of the gospel 
which she enjoys to those who have never heard 
the “old, old story.” A recent writer says: 
“ The people somehow must be made to believe 
in the Church as made up of honest, earnest, de¬ 
voted, self-sacrificing men and women, whose 
hearts are happier and lives purer because of the 
Christian faith. No man as a Christian can ex¬ 
ert saving influence over those who know him un¬ 
less they have confidence in him. No Church 
can expect additions to its membership from the 
world unless the Church, as an organization, is 
seen to possess the Spirit of the Master. Accord¬ 
ing to the divine economy, Churches are the chan¬ 
nels of communication between heaven and earth. 
Through them life comes to the dead.” 

One thing remains to be noticed. In the sec¬ 
ond chapter of Acts St. Luke says: “ When the 
day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all 
with one accord in one place.” The word ren¬ 
dered “accord,” in our English version comes 
from a Greek root which means sacrifice. Before 
the qualification of all qualifications can be be¬ 
stowed upon the Church—the baptism of the Holy 


THE CHURCH ITSELF. 


285 

Ghost—personal preferences, individual choice, 
each will must be laid in sacrifice upon the altar 
of God. “ One accord ” is not reached except at 
the end of personal self-sacrifice. It was a won¬ 
derful feat, these one hundred and twenty dis¬ 
ciples absolutely united. This is the one indis¬ 
pensable condition on which the Holy Ghost will 
dwell in the Church. A Church dead to the 
world and made alive to Christ by the indwelling 
Spirit is an aggressive Church. As soon as the 
disciples were filled with the Holy Ghost they be¬ 
gan to talk, and Peter to preach. It was not a 
sermon in defense of his doctrine, but he boldly 
charged the Jews with putting Christ to death. 
He began at once to attack the strongholds of sin. 
The Church is organized and endued with power 
from on high to go into all the world and invade 
the haunts of sin. With this end in view it cannot 
be in any community simply a latent influence; it 
must be an active, aggressive force; it must be 
“a correcting, reforming, stimulating, consuming 
influence, putting itself at the head of all social 
changes, and resisting by positive efforts the en¬ 
croachments of vice, until it is stripped of its pow¬ 
er to da.harm.” It must be the determined, un¬ 
compromising foe of sin in every form and in 
every place. It can never rest in its efforts to save 


286 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH . 


men until its principles are accepted by all nations, 
until its mild scepter has brought peace on earth 
and a universal reign of righteousness. 

What is the outlook? Consult the past for an¬ 
swer—the record of the Church through the ages. 
With the exception of the thirteenth century, 
when Roman Catholicism held undisputed sway 
where the Christian religion prevailed, Christiani¬ 
ty has gone steadily forward in its work of sub¬ 
duing the world to Christ. The following table 
gives an approximate idea of its progress. The 
number of Christians in the world at the end of 
each century is as follows: 


First century. 500,000 

Second century .... 2,000,000 

Third century. 5,000,000 

Fourth century. 10,000,000 

Fifth century. 15,000,000 

Sixth century. 20,000,000 

Seventh century,... 25,000,000 

Eighth century. 30,000,000 

Ninth century. 40,000,000 

Tenth century. 50,000,000 


Eleventh century... 70,000,000 
Twelfth century.... 80,000,000 
Thirteenth century. 75,000,000 
Fourteenth century. 80,000,000 
Fifteenth century.. 100,000,000 
Sixteenth century.. 125,000,000 
Seventeenth cent’ry. 155,000,000 
Eighteenth century. 200,000,000 

1880, A.D.410,900,000 

1900, A.D. (prob’ly).500,000,000 


Its success is at once a proof of its divine origin 
and a guarantee of its final triumph. This is 
called the age of invention and discovery. But 
who are the inventors and discoverers? Men 
born and trained in Christian lands. Where are 












THE CHURCH ITSELF. 287 

the art galleries and the museums of the world? 
In Christian lands. Science, literature, culture 
are the products of the Christian religion. The 
armies and navies that rule the wot;ld and control 
its commerce belong to Christian people. The 
laws of trade that regulate international traffic are 
the outgrowth of Christian principles. Only in 
Christian lands are found organizations for the 
amelioration and relief of human suffering; asy¬ 
lums, orphanages, hospitals, homes for the aged 
and the helpless. Here all institutions of learning 
flourish, and education does its grandest work in 
disseminating intelligence among all classes of 
people. These all are peculiar to Christian coun¬ 
tries. 

But it is in its power to lift up and purify and 
mold men’s moral nature that its superiority to all 
so-called religions is seen, and its divine origin dem¬ 
onstrated. The author of “ Ecce Homo” devel¬ 
ops this thought in admirable form. “ Compare,” 
says he, “the ancient with the modern world; 
look on this picture and on that. In all the hea¬ 
then world there are scarcely one or two men to 
whom we might venture to apply the epithet holy . 
But no one will deny that in Christian countries 
this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, 
has existed, and few will maintain that it has been 


288 


THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH. 


rare. There has scarcely been a town in any 
Christian country since the time of Christ where 
a century has passed without exhibiting a character 
of such elevation that his mere presence has 
shamed the bad and made the good better, and has 
been felt like the presence of God himself. And 
if this be so, has Christ failed? ” “ But,” as Dr. 

Hoss adds, 4 ‘ it is onty when we look beyond the 
grave and see the eternal light and bliss to which 
the gospel has lighted the millions that have trust¬ 
ed in it for salvation, that we can fully appreciate 
its redemptive power or measure its success, or 
pronounce its inestimable worth to mankind.” 

“ Unto him that loved us, and washed us from 
our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings 
and priests unto God and his Father; to him be 
glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” 


THE END. 












































































































































































































































































































































































































































































